Fenrir

31

Years before Aelis set off to seek Helgi’s help, the child had been taken to the roof of the river loading tower — the highest structure in Ladoga, nearly five man heights tall. Logs had to be removed from the roof in order for her to be passed up through a gap.

Her father laid her down there himself.

‘Nearer the apex, khagan.’

The healer chinked like coins in a purse as he spoke, his whole body adorned with charms and trinkets. Prince Helgi glanced at him and moved the girl nearer to the top of the roof.

‘The surest cure is at the apex,’ said the healer. ‘That is where the cooling humours of the sky settle.’

‘They’ll be no cure for her if she rolls off to her death,’ said Helgi.

‘I will sit beside her and make sure she comes to no harm,’ said the healer.

‘Yes,’ said Helgi, ‘you will.’

He touched the girl’s head. She was boiling in her own sweat. He cursed himself. It never did to love your children too much, least of all the girls.

Helgi was a troubled man and the little girl had been one of his comforts. She was bold and funny, even going as far as to ridicule his stern manner. He would have cut a warrior down for that but she just made him laugh, made him forget his tormented sleep and the nightmares that woke him ranting in the darkest hours of the night. In those awful dreams he always found himself back by that well, the vision of his own death, of the trampling hooves, waking him with a shout. When he returned to sleep there was worse. He saw a warrior on an eight-legged horse — Odin was coming to earth and would march at the head of Ingvar’s armies. The god was treacherous, it was well known, but Helgi felt cheated. He had sacrificed so much, given so many slaves, so many cattle, so much gold. But the portents were clear — he was under divine threat.

So he had sent throughout his land for wild women and holy men, for priests and witches, wanting to hear that the prophecy had been wrong. The mystics came pouring in to Ladoga like a market-day crowd, rattling bones, casting runes, sweating and fasting for prophecy. So many came that Helgi earned his nicknames ‘Helgi the Magician’ and ‘Helgi the Prophet’. All the troll-workers told him nothing, just that he would be a great king throughout all the known lands of the earth. He did not believe them and saw that they only sought to please him.

One mountain woman, though, had drawn a shape in the dust of the floor. ‘This is your destiny,’ she had said. The outline was that of a horse.

‘I will be killed by my horse?’ He glanced left and right. The hall was empty, the druzhina sent outside to prevent them hearing anything that might upset them and, through them, the people. ‘Could the horse be a symbol? Might it mean something else? Might it be that a god is the only thing that can kill me? Could it be a sign of great fortune?’

‘Anything can mean anything,’ the wild woman had said and put out her hand for gold.

There had been a sound from beneath a bench at the side of the hall, and he’d turned to see what it was. It was his little girl, Svava, poking her face from the shadows. He’d laughed when he’d seen her.

‘You know I should beat you for sneaking, don’t you, girl?’

The girl had just chuckled and come up to him.

‘Can I have an apple?’

‘This woman isn’t a farmer, she’s a witch. A troll-worker. Shall I get her to eat you?’

‘I might eat her,’ said Svava.

‘My girl,’ he’d said to the wild woman, ‘as bold as any boy and ten times as cheeky.’

But the wild woman had her gold and was heading to the door, plunging Helgi back into his thoughts of what Odin was about to take from him and give to Ingvar.

Helgi had tried to weaken the boy but Ingvar’s faction was strong, the loyalty he commanded from kinsmen in the druzhina not far from Helgi’s own. His uncles were hard and cunning men and watchful for any plot, so that way was not open to Helgi. He would have to let his original scheme stand: conquer the south and leave the boy to make his mistakes. He was at the mercy of the god and there was nothing he could do about it.

And then in January, the traveller had come, fighting through a terrible blizzard, hunched against the cold. The men had thought him a beggar in his rags and wolfskin, but had been shocked to see anyone emerge from that storm.

The guards had let him in to the town out of amazement and pity. He’d gone to one of the fires they kept going behind the gatehouse to warm himself. A man came to tell Helgi because lone travellers on foot were unheard of in that country at that time of year. No one could travel in such weather and live. Helgi told the druzhina to stay where they were in the mead hall. It would be a dark day when the prince of all the east needed a bodyguard to face a frozen and wandering beggar. He’d been bored, to tell the truth, by the men’s boasts and the drinking games where a mistake in the rhythm of a complicated pattern of clapping forced the error-maker to take a swig. Helgi had played the games so many times that he found it impossible to fail at them and sometimes broke his rhythm deliberately just to wet his palate.

So he had gone alone, shielding his face with his cloak as he walked half blind through the storm.

The man had stood by the fire, the snowy wind turning the back of his body white, looking like a thing of ice himself, a statue topped by a shock of red hair. Helgi told the guard he was a poor host and to get the visitor some food, and the traveller had smiled at him. With his smile, the blizzard stopped and the wind died.

Helgi had looked up. It was night, just past dusk, and the sky was a dark and frozen purple, the stars shards of ice, the slim moon an icicle ready to drop. Without the shrieking wind the special silence of the snow fell upon the town and with it a sense of complete stillness. Helgi felt strange. ‘I know you,’ he had said.

‘And I you, my burning prince, whose desires have melted away all the storm.’

‘What do you know of my desires?’

‘The only thing worth knowing about them.’

‘And what is that?’

‘They will never be fulfilled.’

Helgi felt his blood fall to his knees, though he maintained his composure. It occurred to him to strike the man down where he stood for his insolence, but he felt strangely vulnerable. The freakish change in the weather had unsettled him, but there was something else. What? This man, the firelight crawling over his body like so many snakes, had come half naked through weather that could kill a horse under its rider.

‘Then I should make them greater,’ said Helgi. ‘That way, in falling short, I will have enough.’

The man smiled. A grin of ancient hunger like a wolf’s, thought Helgi.

‘You know what will kill you.’

‘My horse. I am glad of it. It means I am immortal for Helgi owns no horses. All he rides, he borrows.’

‘What a fate! To be master of nothing but a borrowed horse, your lands snatched away by the dead god’s hand. Would you see him?’

‘Show him to me.’

The man moved his hand and the snow in the gatehouse square rose from the ground. It swirled and eddied, turned tiny whirlwinds and finally took shape. It was a scene from the sagas. The dread lord Odin, one-eyed and fearsome, his face contorted into a scream, sat on his great eight-legged horse Slepnir, driving his spear down at a terrible wolf that tore and bit at his shield. The sound of the battle grated through the town and Helgi wondered why none of his druzhina came out to see what was happening.

The spear stabbed into the wolf, lodging in its flesh, and the animal gave a terrible keening howl but it didn’t falter in its attack. The rider’s shield shattered, and the wolf’s front paws dug into the horse’s flank, its teeth snapping at the man’s throat, its body tossed around in a crazy spiral as the monstrous horse screamed and bucked to be free of it. But the wolf did not let go.

And then the snow spectres crashed to the earth and the night was quiet again. Helgi walked forward to where they had fought. All that lay on the snow was a twisted rope. Helgi recognised the triple knot of Odin.

He picked it up and took it to the beggar. It seemed the natural thing to do.

‘When he died last time,’ said the man, ‘this happened.’ From nowhere he produced a long knife and with skilful fingers cut the knot into three pieces.

‘He is in the world, sundered,’ said the man, holding the pieces of the rope out to Helgi. ‘If he ever becomes whole again you and the armies of mankind will have never known such destruction. He will light a fire from the shores of the blue men to Thule, and from the green hills of Albion to the sands of Serkland.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Helgi.

‘He is in the world, as three. If he becomes one again, you and all the kings of the world will run from him like rats from a fire in the corn. Only his favourite will remain. Ingvar will triumph. Ingvar will rule.’

The man’s words seemed to fizzle and sizzle in Helgi’s mind with the sound of a branding iron on an animal’s back.

‘And how does he become one?’

‘How he does anything — by death. Three live with the runes within them. Fragments of the god. Eventually there will be just one, and your destiny will fall upon you and sweep you from the earth.’

‘Who are they? What do I need to do?’

‘Those who drink at Mimir’s well pay a price so to do. Odin gave his eye for wisdom; the bright god Heimdall gave his ear. What did you give?’

‘My peace.’

‘It was not enough. More is required.’

‘What?’

‘A child.’

‘Which child?’

‘The one who sits beside you in your great hall.’

‘For what?’

‘For death.’

Helgi felt a delicious current of anticipation flow through him. Could the god really be asking for Ingvar?

‘And if I do this, the god you have shown me does not come?’

‘Your debt to the well will be paid. Your name will echo down the ages as the mightiest khagan of the earth. You will have a vision, and the way forward will be revealed to you.’

Helgi smiled. ‘You are a god,’ he said. Helgi could sense it. The air around the man seemed to have a pressure to it that rendered the prince’s senses dull, as if he was underwater. Next to him, Helgi felt slow and fragile.

‘I am.’

‘What is your name?’

‘I have many. Here I am Veles and in Rome I am Lucifer. To you I am Loki.’

Helgi felt fear stopping up his breath like a suffocating hand. He composed himself. The terror quietened. He had come to the attention of the gods. He was important, marked for greatness.

‘They call you lie-smith,’ said Helgi.

The god smiled. ‘Those who do not listen make me a liar,’ he said. ‘Men hear what they want to hear, and when they curse me it is not for lying but for speaking the truth. Thank you for the warmth of your fire. I shall repay the gift when I return to take what you have promised me.’

He turned and walked out into the snow. Helgi watched him go, thinking how foolish the gods must be to demand as a sacrifice what he had been praying for them to take away.

That night he had dreamed of a lady who lived in the land of the Franks, blonde and beautiful, a lady who walked in gardens by a river.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘One of the three. You shall know me by these signs.’ She held out her hand. In it were eight wooden counters, all marked with a rune.

‘What is your name?’

‘Aelis, of the line of Robert the Strong.’

‘While you live, I prosper,’ he had said to her.

He had sent a delegation to her brother at Paris the next day, asking for her hand in marriage. He didn’t even receive a response. He had considered an attack but his army was tied up at Kiev, keeping the Pechenegs at bay. That’s when he had decided to kidnap her.

On the roof by the healer Helgi looked down at Svava. He had not thought the god would ask for her. The god had said, ‘The one who sits beside you in your great hall.’ Ingvar was there at all meetings, beside him at every judgement he made, every farmer’s squabble he sorted out, every warrior’s weregild claim, even when visiting kings were entertained. He had given his oath to raise the boy, but if fate struck him down, if the gods struck him down, then Helgi would be free of him without breaking his oath and free to name any heir he chose.

The prince hadn’t even considered the girl — he was a warrior, how could he have thought her important or in any way interesting to the god? She was a scrap, a little thing not six years old. How could the god want her when he could take a boy now thirteen and already battle brave? But the god knew his weaknesses and Helgi had come to realise that you don’t bargain with such as he and walk away without paying in meaningful coin, never mind smirking up your sleeve at your own cleverness.

Helgi looked down from the tower roof. The town was on an elbow of land that stuck out into the wide River Volkhov. Facing inland he could see clear green lands — the barrows of his dead countrymen nearest to him, the woods like a sea themselves beyond. They were digging a barrow for Gillingr now, his Viking brother, who had fought with him as far south as Miklagard, as far west as the Islands to the West. A gash of red soil had been cut behind the last complete barrow, ready for the construction of the burial chamber. There was a problem there, he had heard, but he was too taken with his daughter’s illness to enquire much about it.

His daughter would not have a barrow. She was a thing of movement, bright and quick. He couldn’t bear to think of her entombed under the earth. It would be fire for her, to match her spirit. He looked over the river. He felt like a bird, floating on light above the water, a bird that could turn in a moment and follow the river south to swoop on Miklagard, to plunder the treasures of the Byzantine emperor, to fly on to the Caliphate and return with all the jewels of Serkland. The girl moaned in her fever. He looked down at her and shook his head. He had allowed himself to love his daughter. Men, and kings in particular, should never love their girls, he thought. They were bargaining tokens, no more, to be traded with other kings for gold, land or peace. But he had loved her, for her fierce heart as much as anything.

Svava and her sisters were banned from approaching the king without a lady or their mother to supervise their behaviour. She, though, recognised no bans. She’d come to see him, sneaking in to watch as he dealt with traders, princes and war chiefs in his grand hall. The little girl thought he couldn’t see her, crawling beneath the benches with the dogs, but he saw her all right, catching his eye as he settled a dispute between farmers, robbing him of all sternness at the very moment he might have screamed at the complainers to get out of his sight. She made him chuckle, and although he should have beaten her until her legs were blue, he didn’t. He winked at her and threw her one of the apples the peasant plaintiffs brought as gifts.

He could never turn her away, and eventually she’d just sit by his side on the floor with Ingvar his heir on the other side on a chair as he did his work. He was aware of how it made him look to his men and was careful to pick occasional fights in order to show that, though he might be tender-hearted to his daughter, warriors could expect less kindly treatment. ‘There’s no respect like corpse respect,’ was a maxim his own father had drilled into him from an early age. However, he was pleased when he saw some of his chieftains had begun to allow their own girls to sit beside them at the mead bench.

‘Aeringunnr.’ He went to her and sat down, put his hand to her head and was sure she would die. He had called her by her full name only once before. To him she had always been Svava, or Mouse for her habit of appearing where he least expected. But Mouse was too timid a name for her and he had dropped it and settled on Svava, after a Valkyrie, one of Odin’s battle maidens. ‘Aeringunnr.’ He had called her that when he’d gone to see her on the day of her birth and given her the name. Now, he knew, he was using it to say goodbye.

Tears came into his eyes so he turned his face away from the healer. He spoke to the girl, his eyes on the distance. ‘See what you’ve done? I can’t go down like this.’ Below, warriors were gathering. It was one thing to be seen to have a soft enough heart to have the child on his knee, another to be seen nursing her like a servant.

The healer, who only understood the East Norse of his masters if he listened very carefully, said nothing.

Eventually Helgi composed himself and turned back to the healer. ‘If she dies,’ he said, ‘so do you. She’ll have a boat burned for her to take her to the afterlife. You’ll be in it. It will be a privilege for you, so be happy.’

‘She won’t die, khagan, not on the roof and surrounded by charms.’

‘Good,’ said Helgi. ‘If she lives I’ll leave you to seek a less noble death. You can fuck yourself to death in a whorehouse at my expense.’

‘You are generous, khagan,’ said the healer.

The girl turned slightly and the healer grabbed at her to stop her slipping off the roof.

‘ Ulfr.’

‘What did she say?’

‘I can’t tell, khagan.’

Helgi bent his head to the girl’s ear. She moaned again, repeating the word.

‘It’s likely nothing, lord,’ said the healer. ‘In fever people say all sorts of things that-’

‘ Ulfr.’

Helgi fixed the healer with a stare. ‘What are you talking about, man? She said “wolf” as plain as I can hear you. What does it mean?’

‘There are many forms of spirit that can enter her. It may well be that a wolf spirit has come upon her and-’

The healer was stopped by Helgi’s look of simmering, almost murderous appraisal. The prince was a good judge of men, the healer knew, and had seen through him. But the healer also knew he was the only hope Helgi had.

Helgi spoke slowly and the healer could tell he was struggling to keep his famous temper. ‘Keep her cool up here. If it rains bring her in. Apart from that, make sure she doesn’t fall off.’

‘Yes, khagan. Yes, lord.’

Helgi took one last look at his daughter. She was wet with fever, scarlet patches covering her face, her hair sodden with sweat.

‘And pray to our gods,’ said Helgi, ‘because tomorrow I think you are travelling to their lands as escort to a princess.’