Fenrir

75

The shaft had been cut down into a tunnel which was propped up with pillars of stone and baked brick and extended away from Aelis, ahead and behind. In the shaft she could stand and see, while the day lasted. To gain any shelter from rain or cold she would have to crawl into the darkness.

Aelis struck at her flint. The momentary flash revealed little. It was as if the tunnel ahead of her ate the light, sucking it down into two black pits. She struck again, got some tinder going and lit the little lamp that had been provided for her.

Aelis sat for a while. Her hands went again to the pendant at her neck but she could not remove it, couldn’t make her fingers lift it or undo the knot. She looked up at the sky. The greyness was losing its glow. Soon it would be night. Rational thought seemed to evade her. How to get out? She just couldn’t force her terrified mind to concentrate.

Slowly, some sort of calm returned. Being scared was not going to get her out of the pit. Helgi had called it a mine, and if it was a mine then there would be wood or something she could drive into the wall of the shaft to climb out. Yes, it would be easy to climb up the inside of the shaft if only she could find some wood. She put the flint and tinder away in its pouch, which she tucked inside her tunic. She couldn’t afford to lose that.

There was a thump and something hit her hard across the face, knocking the lamp to the floor. She put out her hand and felt something. An arm! She could just make it out in the guttering flame of the lamp. Aelis drove herself back against the wall to get away from the dead man. She heard screams and shouts from above, some in Norse, some in Roman.

‘Witch!’

‘She bewitched the merchant!’

‘Kill her!’

‘He’s dead, Helgi is dead!’

‘Troll-witch, houserider!’

There was a dead body in front of her. It was him, Helgi. There was no time for horror or elation;, she had to save herself. She forced herself to crawl forwards. Protruding from the dead prince’s back was the handle of a knife. She pulled it out, kneeling on the body’s blood-wet furs. It came free. She looked at it and knew who had killed the khagan.

Aelis picked up the lamp and scrambled into the tunnel. She crawled, putting the lamp in front of her. But the tunnel quickly became very low and she was panicking. As she moved the lamp forward, she drove it into a rock. Its clay bulb burst. All she had was the oil on the wick. When that was gone she would be in darkness. She had gone no more than a body length when the flame guttered and died. Now she felt her way with her hands. The passage dropped steeply but she went on, scraping her knees and crying out when her head hit the low roof.

Men were coming down the ladder. Again the word she had heard so many times in Norse she needed no magic to translate it: ‘Witch!’

Aelis put her hand to the floor in front of her and felt nothing. The ground had disappeared. She turned around and dangled her legs into the void. They touched nothing, not even when she stretched them forward.

‘Get a torch!’ The voice was one of the khagan ’s wider army because it spoke in rough Greek.

So many voices now, she wondered the shaft could contain them all. She could hear five men at least behind her and other more distant voices, shouting and angry.

What to do? It wouldn’t be long before her mind was made up for her. She felt for a ladder going down, a foothold, anything. There was nothing. A fluttering yellow light came from behind her. Her pursuers had their torch. They were coming, crawling down the tunnel. Something flashed in the dark. A spear tip.

‘Witch!’

The man thrust with his spear but he wasn’t near enough. He crawled forward and pulled back his arms to strike again.

She searched for something to pray to. God? He had gone from her life. The runes? Never. They had robbed her of herself. She could think of nothing to help her at all.

‘Die, witch,’ said the man.

Then a name came to her, a name at once familiar and strange, from the life she had lived before. Not a magical creation at all; now more a memory, like a bright flash of childhood alive for a second in the adult mind.

‘Vali, help me!’ she whispered and jumped into the darkness.