Lord of Slaughter

49

Loys listened to the boy speaking. He was mad, the scholar was convinced. They had thought it was Mauger and had quickly taken to a side passage to hide, dimming their light. Only the lamp ahead and the glow of the rocks provided any vision now.

It was not Mauger, but the boy, wandering along as if he was out for a stroll on a sunny day. He mumbled to himself in Norse as he went.

‘Speak more of your stories to me. Do not run ahead so. How shall I fight this wolf? Not to fight? I am a warrior and must always fight.’ He became angry. ‘I run from him by the riverbank because I have no weapons to face a wolf. Give me a spear, sharp and cruel; give me a sword to cut him or a hammer to crush him. I will offer him blood all right, I’ll offer him his own. Here, wolf, I make a sacrifice of yourself to yourself. See how your hungers fare on your own flesh. Do not run from me, my friends; come back, let me touch you again. Send me to that place again and I will face him. He took me by surprise before. I am not a coward. Do not think me a coward. My destiny is death in battle. I am death. Do you not see the corpses I made for you? I have made a city of the dead for you. Come back. Hey, bright symbols, come back. I will build you houses of bones. Ho, what’s here and who’s here?’

Loys heard another voice, this time speaking Greek: ‘Help me!’

He glanced at the wolfman, scarcely visible in the dim light. The wolfman squeezed Loys’ arm — partly to restrain him, partly, thought Loys, as a gesture of reassurance.

‘He is Odin!’ whispered the wolfman. ‘It was he who was in the tent with the head of the rebel at his feet!’

‘Will you go to him to die?’ Loys didn’t want that at all. The wolfman was his protector.

‘He would need the sword.’

The voices again, now both speaking Greek.

‘This pool is a drowning pool. It whispers to me.’ That was the boy, Loys was sure.

‘Save yourself and save me. She has called us here.’ The voice sounded very strained.

‘For what reason?’

‘For death. There is a mad ghost in these caverns and she is hungry for your blood.’ This was accompanied by coughing and retching.

‘I am a man, not a boy. I am no coward and will face the ghost. I am likely a famous ghost killer and a god of death. Remain a while in the water, sir; it suits my temper to see you there.’

‘Can you not feel? Can you not understand? You bring the runes with you. You are a killer, true, but you are a fragment of a death god. She will have us united. The runes are slipping from you. Can you not feel it? I can feel it.’

‘I would have more of these pretty symbols. I cannot yet fathom their use but they take me to a place where I snuff out men’s lives. Take me there again, symbols.’

‘Let me out of the water; I will freeze. Let me out.’

‘Remain a while yet, sir, please.’

‘How old are you, boy?

‘Fifteen years, so my father said. I killed my mother when I was born.’

‘And not yet a man. Are you cut?’

‘No man would dare cut me.’

‘Then you have been held that way by luck or by enchantment. Listen to your voice. You are changing. No man can hold the runes, no man.’

‘You are a brave man to tell me that. I can hold them, true enough.’

‘She will kill you. She will kill me. Death is here. He’s talking to her. Can’t you hear him whispering?’

‘I can hear only you whining.’

The men continued arguing as the wolfman whispered to Loys: ‘Who is that?’

‘Who?’

‘The man in the water.’

‘The man is the chamberlain. The boy is called Snake in the Eye. He is a Varangian.’

‘You know him?’

‘He came to me for a cure for an enchantment.’

‘What cure?’

‘He said he could not kill.’

‘What did you do for him?’

‘Nothing. I told him to come to Christ and give up his savage thoughts.’

A splash from the submerged passage. Loys thought he would crush the handle on his knife, he held it so tight.

The voices at the pool stopped. Snake in the Eye came running up past them, no lantern to guide him, he was just a shadow in the dim light.

‘Get the man out of the water,’ said the wolfman. Then he was gone after the boy, a silent shadow himself.

Loys slithered down the smooth rock bed of the stream to the edge of the well.

The chamberlain was trying to get out but he was shivering violently and could not make his hands grip the ledge of the pool. On a shelf of rock next to him lay the Lady Styliane. Loys put out his hand but the man didn’t have the strength to reach up and take it.

‘She’s here. She’s taken them back. She means me to die.’ His speech was slurred and slow.

Loys lay down and grabbed him, but the eunuch was far too heavy to pull out that way. How to get the chamberlain out of the water? If he rescued him he would have his gratitude and all the benefits that brought.

Loys got his hands under the chamberlain’s arms and pulled hard. He didn’t budge. He shook as if his flesh was trying to writhe free of his bones.

‘She wants a death, for sure she wants a death. He wants a death. He is she as she always was he. Death begetting, mother and father of death,’ Snake in the Eye spoke from the passage.

The chamberlain grabbed Loys’ arm.

‘That’s right, come on, try to lever yourself up.’

But the chamberlain didn’t drag himself up, he pulled Loys down and forward into the freezing pool.

Loys took in great mouthfuls of water. The chamberlain’s arms wrapped around him, pressing him down into darkness. Fighting for air, grabbing at the chamberlain, forcing him down in the chest-deep water, Loys pushed himself up. The two men staggered through the water, falling, rising, fighting and falling again. Loys heard screams and shouting behind him, saw snatches of light before those arms forced him down again.

The chamberlain was exhausted by his time in the water, and whatever strength he’d suddenly found deserted him just as quickly. One moment he was powerful, almost irresistible, the next his energy had faded as rapidly as a flow of a stream cut off by a sluice gate. The chamberlain’s hands continued to claw at him, but his eyes were frightened. He clung to the scholar for support now.

‘Help me,’ he said. ‘The magic has deserted me. I am alone here and she means me to die. I took my power from here years ago and now she wants it repaid.’

Loys remembered how he had been used — played false and set up by the chamberlain. He could not trust the man, and now he knew his secret the chamberlain was a peril to him. Anger fuelled him. A verse from the Bible went through his mind: ‘till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’.

Isais was dead. Loys was a murderer already.

He shoved the chamberlain down and held him. He put up no resistance and drowned easily, his hands on Loys’ hands, gentle almost as if the chamberlain was thanking him. Around Loys the light of the rocks seemed to suck and breathe as he waited for the chamberlain to die. A year ago he could not have killed but he had been transformed. By what? By love and the defence of his love. He released the chamberlain and the body floated face down.

He waded to the ledge nearest him, at the far end of the pool from the entrance. Something was around his hands, like weed. Hair. Long hair. He couldn’t look down, he just washed the hair from his hand and pulled himself up. As he did so a sharp pain bit his leg as something dug into his flesh. The stone he had taken from Snake in the Eye was still in his little bag on its cord. He sat for a moment to regain his strength. Where was the wolfman? Without him he would never get out of the caves. He had to find him.

The woman’s voice was in his head but it made no sense. A rock called Scream, a rope called Thin. What did it mean? He reached into his bag to cast the stone away but he didn’t. He examined it. A wolf’s head crudely scratched upon it, just a pebble tied in an elaborate knot on a thong of leather. The voice gabbled like a market trader. A rock called Scream, a rope called Thin. A rock called Scream, a rope called Thin. Something told him to put the stone around his neck. No, that is devilry. The insane shrieking of the childish voice jumbled all his senses, threw his thoughts into disorder. He would do anything to make it stop. Instinctively he knew the stone would help him. He tied it about his neck clumsily, his fingers at first unable to make the knot. In the end he managed it and the voice fell silent. As soon as it was quiet he was tempted to take it off again. He did not. He tucked it into his robe so no one could see the pagan symbol. He was ashamed of it, but the stone comforted him.

He heard a scream and he recognised the voice at once. ‘Beatrice!’ he shouted.

At the entrance to the tunnel, he saw someone move, someone with a head as white as a deathcap in the lamplight. Mauger was crouching at the edge of the water, a cruel curved sword in his hand.