Fenrir

66

In Helgi’s great hall the fire burned low. A fog was tight about the building, and it was as if the warriors and women in the hall felt its constriction, huddling together almost as if bound. The prince sat near to the fire, half dozing

There was a movement at the corner of his eye. For a minute he thought it was her, Svava, creeping to his side once again. But it was only a cat — Huldre, the big pregnant mouser hunting for scraps. How old would Svava have been now? Old enough that one of the cat’s kittens might be given to her as a present for her new house, a traditional gift to set her on her way in her married life.

He has not yet come with the girl. He was thinking of the wolfman, entrusted to do a job that a band of druzhina could not. Had he ever got to Paris? Had he managed to find the girl? Helgi had no doubt a man who could slip past his guards into Aldeigjuborg could slip into Paris, so he must have had a chance. Had he lost her on the way? Worse, had she been killed? If she died then the runes would leave her and go to one of the others who nurtured their sisters in their minds. The god would be nearer to being on earth, Helgi’s lands a step closer to waste and ruin. The severed knot might be whole once more.

In nightmares Helgi was pursued by the terrible Odin, his spear stabbing towards him, the eight legs of his horse carving a wake through the snow, the god’s face contorted with anger and hate. Everything Helgi saw confirmed what the wolfman had told him — Odin was coming. But what of his bargain with that red-haired fellow? Who had he been? Loki, Helgi was now sure. The god’s names told him all he needed to know: lie smith, prince of the burning air, deceiver, enemy of the gods.

‘The god promised I should be a great king,’ said Helgi under his breath, ‘and yet we are beset.’

He thought back on the strange things that had happened to him since the birth of Aeringunnr, the worse things that had happened since her death. Kiev was rising as a mighty power under Ingvar, while Novgorod, the new capital he was building as a staging post to the east, had been wrecked by fire. His people were in a fret of apprehension and had been for ten years. The week after Svava died they put Gillingr in his barrow, sealing him in with his spear and sword, his bed and his lyre surrounded by everything he would need for the afterlife — food, perfumes, clothes.

It had not been a good sign, he thought, that tunnels had been unearthed during the grave digging. They were deep and they were narrow, most likely Roman mines, according to those who had seen such things before. His people had no skill in mining and had covered the entrance to the tunnels when they sealed the barrow.

But the barrow collapsed shortly afterwards, falling in on itself, and when they dug it out to make it good they found the things missing from the tomb. The jewels were gone, though the lyre was all smashed and broken. The food was gone too and the blankets, the spear. No man had laid hands on any of these things because Gillingr’s family and a good number of Helgi’s druzhina had overseen the whole burial.

People said then that Gillingr’s ghost was living in the tunnels, so he was reburied elsewhere. In the years that followed the townsfolk left tributes to the ghost at the tunnel entrance in his old barrow. Foxes might have taken the bread or the meat left there, but no animal took the pots of honey, the beer, the blankets and the boots that the people laid at the cave mouth. Something did, though.

Helgi seemed called to the spot. He would sit on the mud of the collapse at the mouth of the tunnel watching the pupil-dark entrance. Of course, he had gone inside to look. The entrance was very small and he’d had to force his shoulders through into the tunnel beyond. He found nothing. The passages were too tight, too winding — his way was blocked by a collapse here, a flood there. Now the soil of the barrow excavation was overgrown with grass, but still sometimes he went to the tunnel mouth to sit and think.

Looking into the fire, his mind felt raw and vulnerable. He went outside. The fog that had engulfed the town for a week was still thick, only the guards’ fires glowing like little cocoons of light giving any idea of direction.

‘A ship! A ship!’ The voice was coming from the loading tower.

Impossible. The river had been solid for a week, totally impassable to boats. And even if it wasn’t, the fog made travel almost out of the question. You couldn’t set out from one side of Lake Ladoga confident you would ever see the other.

He went to the tower, thinking it was just a fog spectre and that he would tell the guard to stop being stupid. He climbed up the ladders inside and went to the loading bay.

‘What?’

‘A ship, khagan, I swear it. It was there a moment ago.’

Helgi peered into the fog but saw nothing at all. From his vantage point, though, the fog was thinner. His guards weren’t idiots, so he waited a while. And then, as the fog swirled away for a second, he saw it — a mast and the top of a sail, both heavy with ice, the ship listing to one side.

‘Well let’s see what the gods have served us up here.’ In front of his men he still played the carefree and fearless monarch, the man of action. It was all they understood, and to share his gnawing fears would have been to lose his authority. The guard went to follow him down the ladder but Helgi told him to stay where he was. ‘You’ll need to guide me towards it,’ he said.

‘I won’t see you, lord.’

‘You will see me.’

Helgi ran to the hall to his great chest and pulled out his skates, stout leather shoes bottomed with a folded copper blade. Then he ran for the town gates, took a wall torch and went out to the river, his warriors streaming behind him through the fog. At the river he passed the torch to a druzhina and strapped his skates on. Then he took it back and set off across the ice, the torch a glow-worm in the white darkness.

He could scarcely see four paces and called up to the man on the tower, ‘Can you see my light?’

‘I can, khagan.’ The voice was flat through the stillness of the fog.

‘Then guide me to it.’

He skated forward slowly and the guard shouted for him to turn left. Already he had lost his bearings. On he went, falling twice but regaining the torch.

‘Keep going, lord. Straight ahead.’

He went forward again until the fog seemed to lift slightly and he could see further. There on its side with its oars trapped in the ice like an insect stuck in pine gum lay the longship. The ship was entirely white, like an apparition thrown up by the cold, its sail torn by the weight of crystals, its rigging sagging with jagged icicles.

Helgi went round to the low side of the ship and started back. At each oar was a man, his hands still on the shaft, but frozen where he sat as if enchanted.

One of his druzhina had followed him, and Helgi steeled himself to play the bluff warrior, the jaunty, fearless king, although dread was bound fast to him like the ice was bound fast to the ship.

‘A curious one, lord.’

‘When the gods deliver us booty, let’s not bother ourselves asking how it got here,’ said Helgi. ‘When we drink the wine we don’t ask to see the feet of the man who pressed the grapes.’

The man laughed. ‘Shall I go aboard?’

‘Let us both.’

The man began to clamber up but stopped. On the longship something had moved. Both drew their swords.

‘Who is there?’ said Helgi. ‘This is a trading town, and honest men have nothing to fear from me. I am Helgi, lord of the Eastern Lake, and you are under my protection.’

From the back of the ship a strange figure moved towards them. It was dressed in bulky furs and carried a sword at its waist, but was clearly either injured or bitten by the wolf of the cold. It staggered down the length of the skewed longship, leaning on oars and dead men for support. Five paces from them it bent to catch its breath.

‘Say who you are, stranger,’ said the druzhina. More men came skating in. ‘Say who you are!’ The guard repeated his command.

The figure breathed in and stumbled against the side of the boat.

‘Who are you? I ask again,’ Helgi said.

The figure looked up, gasping and shivering, and stammered, ‘I am Lady Aelis, sister of Eudes of Paris. You are Helgi, prince of the Rus, and you are my salvation. I am travelling with an invalid monk who needs your help.’

Helgi could see that the cold had her in its grip. Panic rose up in him as he pointed the way back to the town and shouted, ‘Get her to my hall! Get her there! This lady must not die! She must not die!’