Fenrir

50

Leshii was relieved to find the mule still grazing where he’d left it. He quickly caught it and headed back to the monastery. He felt vulnerable, alone and very cold. He was soaked to the skin; there was a fresh sea breeze, and the clouds were a low and rolling grey that kept away any hope of the sun.

He would go east. He had an animal to carry him, which the mule would do once it got used to him. That was good. But it was the only positive. Against it he had huge forests full of brigands between him and home, no food, only a small knife and a very uncertain welcome once he got back. In fact, even if he did return his fate might be to be flogged or to starve.

Still, he had no choice. He couldn’t sit in the monastery; he had to move. He was tempted to smash up some of the wood out of the little the Vikings had left and make a fire. Then he reminded himself that he had no way of making one. The flint had gone east with the lady. He’d seen people make fire with a firebow, of course, but he had never learned the knack. It was considered rather primitive in Ladoga. A man of standing, even a merchant of standing, used a flint.

There had to be something, he thought, in the monastery that would make his journey more comfortable. There was only the wolf pelt, which still lay encrusted with dirt where it had been stamped into the earth beside Chakhlyk’s body. The Vikings had not buried the wolfman, just left him where they’d killed him.

Leshii examined the body. It was mutilated, the face swollen and blackened where it had been kicked and kicked again by the Vikings. The hands, though, were intact. He took one in both his and held it. The nails seemed unnaturally thick and sharp, the fingers stained with a kind of dark ink. He wondered if that was what caused the nails to grow like that. He turned the hand over in his. He looked at the scars on the fingers, the creases at the joints, the lines on the palm. He wondered if the fortune-tellers were right. Was this death, here on a strange shore, written in the wolfman’s hand? But the hand had no future, just a past, revealed in the blood beneath the nails, the stain of the strange substance, the darkness of the skin showing a life outdoors.

Leshii looked at his own hand. The lines were supposed to tell him his wealth, the length of his life, the loves he would have. On two out of three counts Leshii was surprised he had any lines at all.

He studied the little whorls on the wolfman’s fingers, some rubbed away or calloused into insignificance. He had not been so intimate with anyone for years. He had an impression of his long-dead mother, no more than a pink face and a shock of black hair. Beyond that, there had been whores, many as a young man, fewer in recent years.

But he had never sat and looked at the lines on someone’s skin, the scars and marks, the wrinkles and veins that only they bore. His great family, his great love, the caravans that travelled south and east to Miklagard and Serkland admitted no such tenderness. He couldn’t say that he felt it as a want in him, even then. He was just curious what it might have been like. Closeness to family or friends had always come second to his business. It was a door he had never opened. He wondered what might have happened if he’d walked through it.

Would he have been sitting in the monastery, holding a dead man’s hand?

He would go to Helgi, he thought, though not because he expected reward. He knew princes too well to expect that. He would be flogged, probably, if he was lucky. Leshii’s view of Helgi’s likely greeting had darkened with his fortunes. But he would go anyway because he needed a place to fit in, however low that might be, not to be as an animal wandering the wilderness.

Leshii put down the wolfman’s hand. Now he felt guilty for taking the man’s charm. He took it from where he had stuffed it into the cloth wound at his waist and examined it. It was a curious thing, roughly triangular but with rounded edges. On it, conforming to the shape of the triangle, was scratched a rough wolf’s head in the Varangian style.

‘Would you like it back, Chakhlyk?’ he said.

No, he thought, he would not give it back; he would wear it in the man’s honour. He unwound his silk neckerchief and tied the thong about his own neck, replacing the scarf over it. Even though he wanted the memento, he was superstitious and didn’t want the Norse god looking down at him and bestowing the same sort of luck as he had on the wolfman. The stone felt like a bond to Chakhlyk, something that made Leshii feel slightly less lonely, even though it was a connection to a man he had hardly known. He picked up the pelt and shook it.

‘Goodbye, Chakhlyk,’ he said. ‘I am sorry for what has happened to you. Your story may earn me a cup of wine at a fireside and I thank you for that.’

He managed to mount the mule and set off, heading east into the woods that lay like an ocean between him and his home. The animal took to being ridden well, and Leshii fell to talking to it, reassuring it when he was really reassuring himself. There were wild men in those woods who respected only a large caravan and plenty of guards. ‘There will be no bandits here, my mule, it is not the season, The grass is thick, is it not? Another short while and I’ll let you eat.’ Leshii shivered as he made his way through the forest. It was less cold in the trees than it had been on the coast but it still wasn’t warm. He put the wolf pelt on, pulling the animal’s head up over his own for warmth.

The track east was good, too good. It could attract bandits. He took it anyway, too old to hack through the denser forest. It was clearly a well-used trail, wet and too deep in mud for a man to pass through easily but no problem for the mule. Leshii would make good progress, he knew. After a day or two he would be far from the monastery and the villages of the coast.

It was a miracle he had come so far with the wolfman. On their journey from Ladoga they had travelled mainly by boat, and when they had been forced into the woods the wolfman’s ears and tracking skills had kept them out of most trouble. Twice he had faced attack, green men of the woods, filthy and bedraggled, barring his path. They hadn’t even bothered to ambush him by stealth, a lone merchant travelling the woods. They’d just come up to his animals and started unloading the packs. That was when Chakhlyk had struck. The first time three were laid motionless on the ground in the first breath of his assault, two more screaming for the trees holding broken arms in the next instant. Within ten breaths the wild men had disappeared. They were tree dwellers, outlaws hiding from normal men, and their traditions and ideas were strange. Chakhlyk’s attacks seemed to them like visitations from a myth, and they had run from him as the Christian men who had come against them had run, as if he was the devil.

But there was no Chakhlyk now; only fear of the trees, the many darks of the forest, the mottled and uneven light bringing a terror of imagined things, things half glimpsed that were almost worse than the terrors of the night and of things unseen. It was spring and the woods were blooming, but Leshii couldn’t enjoy their loveliness.

At least the mule ate well.

Leshii had rescued a waterskin from the monastery and could refill it in the streams, but as rain cast the wood in a slick green shine he felt miserable, old and vulnerable. He had no way to start a fire so just went on as far as he could into the evenings, found what shelter he could, which was not much, and hoped his exhaustion would overcome the cold and take him down to sleep. Most nights the cold won. He began to hallucinate with hunger and tiredness, became no more than cargo on his mule, allowing it to make its own way down the track. The animal seemed to know where to go, keeping straight on when paths split off, making good time in the wet woods. It was happy. The leaves were fresh from the bud and sweet, the pace easy and the old man its only burden.

After a week going east in the forest, Leshii ceased to care if he lived or died, so when he met Death he was ready to welcome him. Death was on his pale horse, his black cloak around him. Leshii saw him at a distance, down the track through a long avenue of trees. He was too tired to run.

Death shouted to him: ‘I thought you were him.’ He spoke in rough Roman, jabbing out the words as if they were dagger thrusts.

Leshii couldn’t speak. He just looked at the figure barring his path and nodded. Why he nodded he didn’t know.

There was something strange about the cloak. It had things thrust into it, things jutting out at many angles. What were they? Feathers, the merchant realised. It was Hrafn. Perhaps if he treated him as a normal man he would act as a normal man.

The merchant found his voice. ‘I have a fine mule to sell here, brother, a splendid Frankish animal. I need to sell him but my companions won’t let him go for less than a hundred dinars. I say he can go to the right man for eighty. Quick, they are coming in great numbers. If you buy him now even the mightiest of their warriors will not say anything against a deal done.’

Death spoke again: ‘I caught a sniff of the wolfman in my dreams and came this way to find him. Where he is, the lady is not far away. That skin you wear on your back, you took it from him. Is he still alive? Is the lady with him?’

‘He is dead but not by my hand.’

The Raven nodded.

‘Did he die protecting her?’

‘Does it matter how he died?’

‘How did he die?’ The voice of the rider was not emotional but Leshii could tell he was burning for an answer.

‘He was bewitched and came to kill her. But he broke the enchantment and tried to take her from the Varangians. They killed him, though he killed many of them.’

This news seemed to affect the rider deeply. ‘That enchantment sprang from the rune that lives inside my sister. No man’s magic could break it. Only a woman could do that, and a woman that held a rune, at that.’

‘He died defending her.’

‘He was not who he thought himself to be. We saw little about him but we saw that.’

‘Who did he suppose he was?’

‘The wolf’s victim.’

Leshii shrugged. ‘He was someone’s victim anyway. Are you here to kill me? You are a servant of death. I know you by the name Hrafn.’

‘Where is the lady?’

‘Taken. Gone east to Ladoga.’

‘On this road?’

‘By the sea. Your Whale Road.’

‘Then we have very little time. My sister has set a trap for her. If she is not successful in drawing her in, then we must take her at Ladoga. The end is near.’

‘What end?’

‘The wolf is coming and he is coming to kill. The lady, your King Helgi, me, my sister, you, very likely, and everyone that stands in his way. Ladoga will fall and who knows what else. The lady must die for it is she who brings him to the god.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Leshii.

‘Odin is coming. The dead god, here on earth, seeking to die. We must frustrate his will. The god must live.’

‘I thought you were his servant.’

‘Sometimes we serve him best by opposing him. The god’s will is a complex thing. It seems possible Helgi is the incarnation of the god, though he may not yet know it himself. My sister’s visions are not clear. If he is Odin we must protect him from the lady who calls the wolf, even though he seeks her. The fact that he seeks her may be indication enough that he is the incarnation of the All Father. The god will come and the god will find his doom if we let him.’

Leshii didn’t really follow. ‘I wish my god would come,’ he said, ‘preferably with a nice pot of money.’

The Raven looked around him. He seemed nervous, thought the merchant.

‘I may need your help at Ladoga if the lady makes it there,’ said Hugin.

‘Can you get me to Ladoga? It’s a long way to walk.’

‘I can escort you there but I need your help getting access to the prince. You are his servant, are you not — along with the wolfman?’

‘I am his servant but it’s a trading town; you can walk in there yourself. You don’t look like a man who will be kept out of somewhere he wants to go.’

‘The prince seeks to protect her and will be looking for attackers. That much has my sister foreseen. But neither he nor she will not suspect you. You can find her. You can tell me where she is.’

‘Your magic seems weak. Do your prophecies fail you?’

‘We are moving in the realms of the gods. Knowledge is not easily won.’ He gestured to his face.

‘Why should I risk my life for you?’

‘I could kill you here.’

‘And then how shall I serve you? You need to sweeten the deal, Raven.’ Leshii was surprised by his own boldness but his merchant’s instinct told him his was the stronger bargaining position.

‘Here,’ said the Raven. From his pack he took a necklace of twisted gold, hanging with rubies. ‘This is yours. I have a hundred further dihrams in my pack.’

Leshii took the necklace. It was a beautiful thing. He had never seen its like, a twist of golden cables with deep red stones dangling beneath. It had to be worth two thousand dihrams, easily.

‘Keep it,’ said the Raven.

‘Aren’t you afraid I might not honour my bargain?’

‘You will honour it,’ said the Raven, and Leshii knew that if he valued his life he would.

Leshii did a quick sum in his head. That money was enough to see him through ten years of retirement or even twenty if he went easy on the dancing girls and fine wines, something he had no intention of doing. And the good luck did not stop there. This weird creature was certainly no servant of Mithras, as the Romans would have had it. He clearly hadn’t a clue about money. There might be more to be had out of him. He would have to keep out of Helgi’s way — maybe even travel down to Byzantium, but a rich retirement in the greatest city on earth was nothing to be afraid of.

Leshii offered a word of thanks to Perun and puckered up his lips as if in thought.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘let me see what I can do.’