Fenrir

30

Aelis felt the thump in her ribs. She awoke to see the half-naked man standing over her. He was sweating heavily, his eyes rolling in his head. She tried to stand but he kicked her legs from under her, driving the knife down between her shoulder blades. This time, as it hit the mail hauberk she wore beneath the cloak, the knife snapped. The blow was a heavy one, though, and she fell face first to the reeds.

People were on their feet, the whole house in uproar. The young man seemed nonplussed by the fact that his weapon had broken and sat down on the floor.

Aelis stood and a terrible pain shot through her. Her ribs were broken, she thought, front and back, but the mail coat had saved her life.

She bent for her sword but she was in agony and her movement was slow. The young man looked up at her, almost as if seeing her for the first time. Then he lunged from his sitting position, driving himself forwards to slam into Aelis, sending her sprawling. His hands were at her throat, but she had Sigfrid’s sword free from its scabbard. Her vision constricted to a tunnel, her head thumped, her ribs were on fire, but she shoved the blade into the man’s belly and kept pushing until the crosspiece hit his navel.

Her sight faded, the voices of the room were distant and echoing. The hands at her throat were unyielding. Then there was a thump and she could breathe again. The merchant was standing over the young man, who tried to get up but the handle of the sword dug into the floor and he gave a terrible cry. He pulled at the weapon, struggling to get to his feet as if drunk, one leg gaining purchase on the floor, the other flailing, refusing to obey his commands. For a second he was upright but then lurched forward and dropped to his knees, his shaking hands still tugging at the unmoving handle of the sword.

Aelis was doubled up on the floor, gasping for breath, coughing and choking, still uncertain as to whether she had been stabbed, so great was the pain in her ribs.

‘You’ll die for what you’ve done, nobleman!’

The boy’s father was striding towards her, an axe in his hand, but Leshii leaped between him and the spluttering figure of Aelis. The merchant had drawn an axe and held it above his head, ready to strike. An angry crowd of around twenty people faced them. The farmer’s wife, a big woman with raw cheeks, ran weeping to her son.

‘No one does anything until we find out what’s gone on,’ Leshii said. ‘Look to your boy rather than a fight you won’t win. The lord did for Sigfrid; he’ll do for you.’

The farmer looked at Aelis, clearly wondering what his chances were in a fight against the young nobleman. Not good, he seemed to decide. He went to where his wife was cradling her son’s head. The young man was still sitting upright, his eyes staring into nothing.

‘What happened?’ The farmer’s wife’s voice was gentle.

The youth’s mouth fell open.

‘My thoughts were a snake,’ he said. ‘He had been hiding inside me and he came forward to strike. The raven called him out. The bird bit at me and my thoughts went wild.’

‘This is sorcery,’ said Leshii. ‘The boy was bewitched. The Raven is a noted necromancer, an unholy priest of the Viking invader. Look, there is his instrument, the bird, that is what drove your son to this.’

The raven was in the open doorway. As if it heard its name, it took wing and flapped into the night.

‘He came at me while I was sleeping,’ said Aelis, each word forced out with what little breath she had. ‘If I had attacked him first with my sword he would have had no chance to strike at me. Look, he broke the knife on my mail.’

The farmer looked up to where the boning knife was snapped to its handle.

‘Get out,’ said the farmer. ‘Go from this place. You are not welcome to come here bringing devils to our door. Get out!’

Aelis stood and limped towards the door, the eyes of the crowd on her. Leshii, though, stayed.

‘What are you waiting for, foreigner? Leave!’ said the farmer.

Leshii stepped forward. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave you with my lord’s sword. It is too valuable a weapon. It’s worth three of your farms.’

‘I will kill you before you take it.’

‘Let him take it, father. I can abide it no more.’ The boy’s voice was faint.

Leshii looked into the farmer’s eyes. The man looked away and then at his son. He kissed the boy on the forehead and his wife squeezed her son’s hand.

Leshii stepped forward and took the handle of the weapon gently. Then he put his foot into the youth’s chest and with a wrench pulled it from his body. The boy gave a yelp but then was quiet.

Leshii stood above him holding the bloody sword.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Apply to the count for compensation. Tell him the one he thought lost did the work. Ask in the name of Lady Aelis.’

‘Get out!’

Leshii left the house and went to Aelis. She was lying in the mud and shit next to one of the flimsy animal shelters.

‘Well, lady,’ he said in a low voice, ‘we have the clothes we stand up in, weapons, two horses and a mule. You are followed by enchanters who have shown their skill. Will you put your trust in me now?’

She said nothing.

‘Now will you believe me? There are sorcerers hunting you. You must get to Ladoga and Helgi. He is a great magician and will drive these evil things from your back.’

He put his arm around her to lift her, but as he did became aware of a presence in the shadows. It was the wolfman.

‘Chakhlyk?’

‘Ladoga,’ said Sindre. ‘You must get her to Ladoga. I can help you as long as the arrow lets me live.’

Leshii nodded. ‘Then let’s get the animals,’ he said.

Aelis looked up from the mud. Her mind felt dislocated, knocked sideways. She thought of the horses at the river, of how she had killed Sigfrid and she shuddered. What explained that? Supernatural forces seemed all around her and within her. She stood. She was in no condition to ride but she had seen the look on the young farmer’s face, and, more than that, had sensed what was within him. There had been an acid feeling to his presence. A sensation like heartburn sprang up inside her when she thought of him. Something more than human, venomous, had hissed and coiled within him. She felt certain Leshii was right: it was sorcery and she knew it was unlikely that this attack would not be the last.

She glanced at the two men with her. Would one of them come for her in the night, his eyes wild, his body burning? She couldn’t think too much on that. She had to get away from this thing that was following her, and to quell the odd sensations that afflicted her.

The wolfman, she could sense, was a good man acting for good, his presence complicated and odd, wild yet not hostile. When she looked at him she saw great spaces, valleys, rivers and woods, felt a longing, but a solidity too. He would not let her down, she knew.

‘Come on,’ said Leshii. ‘Let’s at least get away from here. Who knows what’ll happen if these countrymen suddenly decide they want revenge for the death of their kinsman.’

Aelis allowed Leshii to help her up onto her horse, her ribs were agony. The wolfman mounted the other animal and the merchant led the mule out of the village, heading north by the Pole Star. Aelis could not decide what to do. The forces against her seemed overwhelming. She wanted to go to Melun but couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t be making things easier for her enemies by going there — surrounding herself with men who could be enchanted. They made slow progress over wet fields and finally came out into common land and woods. Passing through a clearing, she heard distant screams, sounds of anguish and terror from back the way they had come. She turned to look behind her.

‘Don’t think about it,’ said the wolfman. He drew his horse alongside her. He was not used to riding, she could see, and was lucky Sindre’s horse was a well-trained gelding. He flopped on the animal as a passenger, not a rider. She wondered if it was the effect of his wound or if, like the northerners, he had never been taught to ride properly. ‘We must press on, and quickly,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ said Aelis.

‘The Raven is not easy to kill,’ said Sindre, ‘but he will not know where we have gone and neither will the farmers. If we can make the River Oise then we can take a boat. We must not sleep until then.’

‘He will kill all the farmers?’

‘He will spare some of them for a while to try to gain the information he needs but then he will kill them too. He can’t risk them running to their lord, and a party of warriors searching the countryside for him and whoever is with him.’

‘He seems a match for any warrior.’

‘Perhaps. But what if your kinsmen find us? He means to kill you and doesn’t want anything delaying that. If your people rescue you it will make things difficult for him.’

‘Then I should go to my people.’

‘You will only delay your death. You were with your people when he came for you before. Helgi is your only hope in this.’

‘Why does that thing want to kill me?’

‘Just press on. We have no time to talk.’

‘Why does he want to kill me? I have a right to know.’

The wolfman swallowed and went to put his hand on her hair in a gesture of affection. Then he withdrew it. ‘He is afraid of you. Now let’s be gone.’

‘We go nowhere until you tell me more. Why am I pursued? Why am I harried? How can something like that be afraid of me?’

Sindre looked across at her. He leaned heavily on the pommel of his saddle.

‘Because something else follows you too. It always has and always will.’

‘What follows me?’

‘You dream of a wolf?’

Aelis nodded. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I dream of him too.’

‘Does he say that he loves you?’

The wolfman was silent but Aelis could see the fear in his eyes. He looked very old, she thought, or rather he had an air of great age about him. He had, she thought, travelled a long way to be with her, and not just in distance. When she looked at him she felt the wheel of the seasons turning — rain, sun and rain again. But she sensed something else too. His life was passing. It would not be the arrow that killed him, nor the Raven. His death would come quickly and unforeseen.

When she was a child she had taken her meals in the kitchen at Loches. She was a girl and so was not invited to the high table, but she had not wanted to go. In the great hall there was an iron stand as tall as a man. It held a brazier at the top of it which lit the room on feast days. She had hated it and not known why. It seemed to her like an evil presence simmering by the table, a tall, pendulous thing full of harm. Her cousin Godalbertus was hardly more than a baby, just able to walk. The stand had fallen, caught by a drunken nobleman, and had struck the child and killed him. Count Albertus had had the stand taken outside. Someone had filled the brazier with earth and grown flowers in it. All her youth it had stood in the garden, flowers spilling from its basket, like death in his victory garland. When Aelis looked at Sindre it was as if the stand — or rather the evil feeling the stand seemed to generate — was behind him, ready to fall.

‘What will happen to me?’ she said.

‘You will go to Helgi and you will be saved.’

Aelis sensed the uncertainty in his voice.

‘Will the Raven kill me?’

‘He will try. I cannot tell. No one can tell. It will not profit you to know more until you are with Helgi. I promise you, he will give you a better explanation than I can.’

‘And you do all this for the love of your prince?’

‘Lady?’

‘You said you were acting for love.’

The wolfman looked into her eyes. Aelis had that feeling of great age again, but this time seemed to share it. She went back in her mind to her childhood and then beyond that. She had the sensation of a weight in her arms, of falling and of a terror at her back that she could not shake.

The wolfman winced and grasped his side.

‘We must move quickly. I am in no condition to fight the Raven if he finds us.’

‘If he is scared of me then shouldn’t we wait for him?’

‘The Raven expresses his fear in sword cuts and tortures,’ said Sindre. ‘He does not hide from the monsters of his dreams, he hacks them down.’

‘Can we get on?’ said Leshii. ‘We can find the river. The current is too strong to take a boat, but if we can find a crossing we can cut north and lose our pursuers.’

Aelis looked at Sindre. In her mind she was standing on a ledge in a high cold place. She was holding something in her arms. It was a man. She could not see his face. Was it the wolfman? Someone like him, though she couldn’t tell. She didn’t know what to make of the vision, nor did she know if she saw the past or the future. Perhaps, she thought, she saw something that had never happened, nor never would be. But it told her she was linked to this man in a way that went far deeper than his rescue of her or their present conversation. But when she looked at him, she did not think of love. Another word came into her mind: daudthi. It meant nothing to her — that is, she couldn’t translate it — but it too seemed to come in a rush of images and sensations: a warrior, his white hair gleaming from the dark and then gone like a fish in a pond, cries of anguish, her body aching and bruised, and a smell, a deep animal smell seeping from somewhere at her side, a smell that brought her around again to that word and a knowledge of its meaning. Daudthi. Death. And it was death she saw when she looked at Sindre, not love.

But still, better death for her than against her. The wolfman had tried to protect her and she felt compelled to act on her instinctive trust of him.

She looked up at the Pole Star and then east to the constellation of Cassiopeia. Its flat upright M-shape seemed to her like the symbol in her head, the one that called the horses, and she imagined the stars as a rearing horse pointing her way. There lay her destiny, she was sure, with Helgi and his magic in the lands of the Rus.

‘Take me to the east,’ she said, and squeezed her legs against the horse’s flanks to urge it forward.