Wolfsangel

8

The ship had been in the great hall for repair and they’d had to pull it down to the water. Everything had seemed more intense than normal to him that morning — the creak of the cords, the rumbling of the keel on the logs, the acrid smell of the pitch on the hull, the heaving song of the warriors. Bend your backs, boys, don’t be slow Over and over the ocean we go Where our swords will dance on our enemies’ shields Like the glimmering fish on the sea’s blue fields So bend your backs, boys, don’t be slow Over and over the ocean we go.

He pulled as hard as he could. ‘Don’t leave all your strength on the shore,’ an old man said to him, and Vali had to smile to himself. He saw himself as he was, a young boy trying to show himself manly through his effort, frightened of the greater test of battle to come. The self-knowledge, though, did nothing to lessen the overwhelming nature of the experience.

The morning cold was sharp, the blue of the ocean dazzling and the cries of the sea birds made an echoing cavern of his mind. She had been there then, and this time he hadn’t needed to steal a kiss from her.

She fixed a bright purple sprig of betony to his cloak. ‘It fights evil,’ she said, ‘and it will keep you safe.’

‘I’ll still take my shield,’ he said.

‘It might be wise.’

‘Adisla.’

‘Yes, Vali.’

‘I…’

She put her hand to his lips.

‘Don’t say it,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘It brings bad luck. If you let the gods know you value something they will take it away from you. Come back to me. You don’t need to tell me how you feel.’

King Forkbeard had not missed their intimacies but chose to pretend to. His daughter Ragna stood at his side, six years old and playing with a distaff. Vali looked at Forkbeard and then back to Adisla.

‘He’s hoping I’m killed,’ he said.

‘But in a nice way,’ said Adisla. ‘He’d prefer Authun had sent him a different sort of prince. Tougher, more manly, more bad-tempered, that sort of thing.’

‘Let’s hope I’m alive to disappoint him.’

‘If you’re not you’ll be in Odin’s halls, drunk for all time in the company of heroes.’

Vali rolled his eyes.. ‘Listening to the likes of Bragi banging on about their exalted deeds of slaughter. Drunk for all time? You’d need to be to stand that.’

‘That’s sacrilege,’ she said, laughing.

‘Who cares? The gods are afraid of us — that’s what my father says.’

‘Everyone’s afraid of your father,’ she said.

‘Can you imagine it? Sozzled, with him glowering at me across the mead bench for ever. I’ll die a coward if it means I can be with you.’

Adisla blushed. ‘Don’t go soppy on me just because you’re scared,’ she said. ‘I shall be your Valkyrie, urging you on. Win glory, my darling, win glory! Return in triumph or not at all!’

She had put on an upper-class accent and pretended to dab at her eye with a cloth, just as the noblewomen did when their husbands went raiding. Vali knew her very well and understood that her light-hearted mood was for show. He smiled at her and touched her hair. The tears came into her eyes and he could not face them down.

Now he turned to the boat, splashing out into the water, shouldering the small chest that would be his seat for the journey. He heaved it into the longship, then climbed on board and picked it up. His feet stumbled on the spars and ballast stones of the undecked vessel as he looked for his oar place, trying to look calm, trying to look as though he knew what he was doing. There was no one he knew on the boat, and no one he even recognised.

He had a place on the drakkar, a sleek and slim warship with a carved bear’s head snarling from the prow, as befitted his status as one of the warrior class. Alongside were two fat-bellied knarrs, trading vessels that, empty, sat much higher in the water. They were for the plunder. On those boats were the farmers Vali knew. This made him slightly nervous. Normally, the way men recognised friend from enemy in battle was that they were put into groups from the same area who knew each other by sight. Among strangers and in the heat of a fight, he might be mistaken for a foe.

He looked around him as he moved down the ship, determined that he at least would recognise the faces of the men he was fighting with. Each man at an oar was huge, his hair and beard unkempt and shaggy, his clothes dirty, with a stale smell coming off him. Many bore so many tattoos they seemed almost blue. Vali glanced at them and tried not to use their shoulders to balance as he went forward. There were mutterings. Vali couldn’t tell if they were directed at him, at each other or were just ravings. It was an under-breath babble — the words were half formed; he could only just make them out. When he did, he wished he hadn’t.

‘Unmanly… frightened… Kill the cowards. I kill, smite, shit and piss. Know they’ve been in a fight. Kill all. None alive. Burn the earth, burn the earth.’

He glanced at their eyes. They seemed focused on nothing, red-rimmed like people who hadn’t slept for days, staring balefully ahead. Some of the men wore the pelts of animals about them or on their heads, and some were near naked, despite the dawn cold. Vali didn’t care for their company at all.

At the back of the boat, being sealed into barrels or tied to the stern, were their weapons — axes and spears. He’d seen only one sword. These were not rich men. Unlike themselves, however, the weapons were well cared for, the axe heads honed to brilliant silver, the spears as sharp as bodkins.

There was a hand on his shoulder.

‘Here’s your oar, son.’ Bragi had come up behind him, and Vali was glad to see him.

Vali put his chest down and sat on it. Bragi climbed in across from him, put down his chest too, sat on it sideways and lightly punched the prince’s arm.

‘Now you might wish you’d paid attention to what I had to say about sword, shield and spear.’

Vali, his flippancy driven off by nerves, just smiled back.

Bragi put his hand on Vali’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, prince, you’ll be fine. Though if you’d listened to me more, you’d be finer. I got you a place on the best boat.’

Vali, leaned away, resenting the intimacy.

‘None of my kinsmen are here.’

‘No, but you are among the best warriors in twenty kingdoms, ’ said Bragi.

‘These men?’

‘Yes.’

‘Berserks?’

‘Yes, from the northern cult of Odin the Frenzied, working solely for transport.’

‘And the plunder they can take,’ said Vali.

‘Only up to a point. They’ll take plunder for sure, but it’s not their main aim,’ said Bragi. ‘It might be better if it was.’

‘What do they fight for?’

‘To fight. Look at them. Each man here has been on many raids but are they rich? No. Do they have many slaves? No. They aren’t concerned by such things.’

‘They want no plunder?’

‘Yes, a little, but this is why they’re useful to Forkbeard. Their reward is the scrap itself. He gets some good fighters and they don’t bother too much about the booty.’

‘They sound insane,’ said Vali.

‘Maybe they are, but you can learn from them nevertheless. You’ll see how a man conducts himself in war.’

Vali said nothing. To him it was as important how a man conducted himself in peace. To sit muttering curses while bleary-eyed through who knew what concoctions of mushrooms and herbs was the act of an idiot, not a hero. They were three days from the fight, according to Bragi. The berserks were simmering before they had set off. What would they be like in sight of the enemy spears? Still, he was interested to see if they lived up to their reputation as invulnerable and fearless. Could it really be true that weapons didn’t injure them? Looking around the ship, he was glad he was fighting with them rather than against them.

The wind was up, which was why they were sailing. The longship’s sail billowed and snapped as it was unfurled, as if impatient to get going. Its design had been chosen in his honour — black with a snarling wolf’s head picked out in white. Vali looked up at his father’s symbol — the symbol, of everything he was supposed to become, in fact everything he was supposed already to be. It made him shiver to think of the weight of responsibility he carried.

His musings were interrupted by a boot in the back.

‘Move your arse. I need to stretch my legs.’

He turned around to see a huge man in a thick tunic, a white bear skin over his arm. A deep groove ran from the top of his head, over his eye socket and down into his cheek. Clearly he had been on the wrong end of an axe at some time in his life. Every inch of his body seemed covered in thickly drawn tattoos: scenes of destruction and battle, the coiling world serpent around his right arm, the wolf fighting Odin on his left, the three interlocking triangles that made up that god’s symbol below his left eye, and many other illustrations of animal figures, gallows and weapons all over his face and upper body.

Vali’s knife and sword were at the bottom of his travelling chest and he knew the berserk would attack him if he saw him go to take them out. He had to act, though. This was a slight to his honour in front of everyone and he couldn’t let it go unpunished, even if he was sure he’d receive more in return than he was capable of handing out.

He had only one course of action, one possible response. He swung a fist at the man’s head. The man enveloped the blow under his arm and came up to join his hands at Vali’s throat. The boy’s arm was locked and he was forced down, feet skidding for purchase on the ballast stones but finding none. The berserk snarled into Vali’s face and tightened his grip on his windpipe. Confrontation has a way of peeling back illusions and self-deceptions. Vali was no longer a man on his first raid, a prince of the sword-Horda, son of Authun the Pitiless, who could trace his ancestry back to Odin himself, and the hope of a nation. He was a frightened boy, caught by a much bigger and stronger man.

All he could focus on was the man’s face, which seemed contorted with hate. He was choking Vali and the boy’s whole consciousness seemed to condense into trying to remove the hands from his neck, but he couldn’t budge them. His vision seemed to contract to a tunnel, his head seemed ready to burst. Then a broad-bladed knife came into Vali’s line of sight, but it was at such an angle that the berserk could not have been holding it. Something else came into view — a large pole with three iron rings fixed loosely about it by pegs. Both were interposed between him and the berserk.

‘Save it for the enemy, Bodvar Bjarki,’ said a voice.

The berserk released his grip and Vali lay back gasping, his vision blurred. When he recovered his sight he saw Bragi staring down the scarred man, the old warrior’s knife pointing at the berserk’s throat. There was the rattle of metal on metal and a huge berserk in a brown bear pelt shoved that odd pole between the men. Bodvar Bjarki and Bragi said nothing, as hard men often don’t in such circumstances. They just continued looking into each other’s eyes. The brown bear berserk gently pushed Bjarki back down into his seat with the pole. The big man put his hands onto his oar. Bragi gave a short, amused snort and slid his knife back into its sheath. Then he sat back at his oar. Vali stood and climbed in across from him.

Bragi turned to Vali, making no effort to keep his voice down so the berserk wouldn’t hear.

‘I told you the value of keeping your weapons close. If you’d had your knife you could have gutted him.’

Vali nodded. Embarrassment mingled with relief, but still, he thought, hadn’t the situation resolved itself without anyone being gutted — for the moment anyway? If he’d had his knife then the result might have been one dead berserk and a blood feud. Or, worse, the berserk might have got the knife off him. Vali was aware that his strength in no way compared to that of the giant behind him. He glanced at the shore. Adisla was looking anxiously towards him. He inclined his head towards the big berserk and shrugged. Adisla mouthed, ‘Be careful,’ and he nodded in acknowledgement.

After that, the men said nothing at all, just began to row out to sea, more for show than for effect, as the lines on the great sail were tightened and it pulled them out of the bay at an exhilarating pace. Vali raised his hand in goodbye to the people on the shore, saw the figures becoming smaller and smaller and lost himself in the rhythm of the oars.

The ship, which the skalds called the stallion of the waves, really did feel like that, a living force straining to get forward. For a moment Vali almost forgot the brooding presence at his back. Then, against himself, he gave half a glance behind him. The disfigured man was staring directly at him. Or was he being silly? There wasn’t really anywhere else for him to look.

Bragi saw Vali’s glance and turned to wink at the boy.

‘Don’t show me the man with the scars; show me the man who put them there,’ he said. Vali smiled. Bragi was a good man, he thought, who had his interests at heart. He was honest, big-hearted, straightforward and courageous. Vali just wished he found him less boring.

The journey was to take three days — three days of dull stories, homely advice and excruciating jokes from the old boy. In rescuing him from the berserk, Bragi had achieved a small victory. Vali should have had a knife on him, granted. But it was that, a small victory. It didn’t imply, as Bragi seemed to with his told-you-so smile, that everything the old man said and believed was correct, and that he now had the right to patronise him for the foreseeable future.

Vali thought of a trader he’d met two years before, Veles Libor from Reric in the east, who was travelling up to see the Whale People. Now he would have made a better mentor, had he stayed. He knew so much, had travelled the world in peace not slaughter and survived off his wits. With him, Vali felt inspired and eager to learn. He had spread out his scrolls, and Vali had been amazed to see the beautiful colourful pictures and intriguing squiggly writing. He had longed to find out how to read it, how to put down his thoughts in long waves of ink that rose, fell and broke like the surf. Bragi, though, had nothing to teach him that he wanted to learn.

The journey had been scouted the summer before. They skirted the coast north up nearly as far as the Whale People and then across west to the Islands at the World’s Edge — which were no longer at the world’s edge but simply a staging post to the richer lands to the west. From there they sailed south and picked up the coast of the West Men’s land. Vali slept on the bottom of the boat, wedged in among the other men, listening to the mutterings and cursings of the berserks, looking up at the stars and thinking of Adisla.

The berserks never bothered to speak to him, and he was glad of that, as it allowed him to remain in his own thoughts. His people saw no beauty in the sea. He thought of the names they gave it: roarer, empty place, devourer, rager. To them it was an obstacle, a place of production and a killer. They turned the backs of their houses to the water, not wishing to look at it when they opened their doors. But Vali was enchanted by it, the sparkling greens and blues, the movement of the clouds on the horizon, the delight when a wave broke over the side of the ship and a mackerel landed in his lap.

Then: ‘The island! This is where it happens, boys!’

Vali glanced over his shoulder but could see nothing, no land, no enemy. Bragi put a hand on his arm. ‘Stick to the oar, lord; don’t worry about what’s waiting for us when we get off the boat.’

Vali nodded, aware that soon he would be killing his first enemy, or being killed himself. He wished he’d unpacked his sword already. He felt the need to piss and stood to do so. He wasn’t the only one. It was almost a comical sight, ten men weeing over the side in one go, a like number on both accompanying knarrs, as if it was some sort of ritual.

Vali scanned for land. All he could see was open sea. No, there was something, a flat dark patch in the hazy distance. ‘This is it,’ he told himself. ‘This is it.’

The men pulled in their oars and laid them flat in the bottom of the longship. The berserks’ leader, the man with the strange staff, piled up ballast stones. Then he took out some twigs and kindling, and got a fire going on top of them. When it was established, he hung a cooking pot above it from a tripod and added water from a skin. Then he began throwing in things from a pouch.

Vali went to the back of the ship and took his weapon from a barrel, along with his helmet. He was intensely nervous and every movement felt unnatural, scrutinised by the men around him and found wanting. Other men were breaking open barrels and strapping on their war gear. There was no conversation. None of the berserks spoke to each other but just mumbled into their beards, cursing and issuing threats to non-existent opponents.

The contents of the fire pot were poured into a large bowl, which was passed around, drained dry and refreshed. It came to Vali and he looked inside to see a gritty soup. In it floated shrivelled, spotty mushrooms that looked to him like human ears. He passed the bowl on to the berserk next to him without drinking and watched as the man gulped at the brew.

When each of the berserks had taken the soup, they took up their oars again.

The war band leader made his way to the front of the ship, carrying the staff with the iron rings. He steadied himself by the prow as his men rowed and began to bang the staff on the boards of the ship, thumping out a clanging beat. The berserks responded to the rhythm by stamping their feet as they worked the oars.

‘Odin!’ shouted the leader.

As one, the berserks replied, ‘That means fury!’

‘Odin!’

‘That means war!’

‘All Father!’ screamed the leader.

‘Mighty in battle!’ came the reply.

‘All Father!’

‘Make red our swords!’

‘Odin!’

‘That means frenzy!’

‘Odin!’

‘That means death!’

The berserks howled and smashed their heads into their oars, spat and swore as they powered the boat towards the shore. The war band leader beat the rail of the ship with his rattle, screaming and shrieking out his words.

‘Odin’s men!’ he shouted.

‘We are men of Odin!’ the berserks screamed back at him.

‘Men of Odin!’

‘We are Odin’s men!’

The chanting seemed to go on for ever, and the berserks seemed to have an endless supply of words spilling out in chants as fast as a fighter’s heartbeat. They went wild, punching at the oars as they rowed, slapping themselves and screaming the words into each other’s faces. The beat became faster.

‘Odin!’ shouted the leader, hammering his rattle into the rail.

‘Man maddener, all hater, war screamer!’

‘Odin!’

‘Wolf fighter, spear shaker, corpse maker!’

‘Odin!’

‘Great wrecker, down thrower, foe slayer!’

‘Odin!’

‘Berserker, berserker, berserker!’

Now some of the men stood, punching their chests and arms. The ship lurched as one man in his frenzy forgot his oar, and the blade caught in the water.

‘Odin!’

‘Berserker, berserker, berserker!’

‘So they call me!’ shouted the man with the rattle.

‘Odin!’ howled the oarsmen.

‘So they call me!’

‘Odin!’

In his fear and excitement the words came to Vali as impressions. They seemed more than names. It was as if the wild chanting gave them a life, as if he could see the images they conjured — Odin fighting the Fenris Wolf, a spear flying through a clear blue sky, gallows and slaughter, fire and blood. The beat of the oars never slackened, though Vali was sure the men could not sustain the pace for much longer. Instead they got faster, hardly missing a stroke, despite many of them swigging from drinking horns which were regularly refilled from a huge jug carried by a boy. Vali wondered that anyone could even lift such a pitcher, never mind pour it without spilling it on a longship as it crashed through the surf.

As the jug passed, Bragi shouted across to him, though panting with exertion, ‘I’d have a drink if I were you. Ale waters the courage inside you and makes it grow!’

Vali did as Bragi suggested, taking his horn off his belt to have it filled and swigging down a couple of mouthfuls. He could drink no more, beginning to feel sick with the anticipation of what was to come rather than the movement of the ship. The berserks were baying now, screaming obscenities and promises to their god.

He glanced over his shoulder again and got the impression of the blue giving way to green behind him. Then white joined the blue and green. A beach. There was a judder and Vali was thrown back off his chest to sprawl onto the ballast.

Propelled by the frenzied rowing, the boat grounded on the beach far harder than it needed to. Vali thought they’d been lucky not to tear out the hull. He had to roll aside as a stampede swept over him, the berserks howling in their mania to get off the boat. Not one bore a shield, none even armour or a helmet, just spears, axes and, in the case of the leader, a sword in one hand and the huge rattle in the other.

Vali turned to see who they were charging at but saw nothing, just a pleasant broad beach of light sand, the sunny day, birds over the meadows and deep green grass. There was no enemy there at all.

The berserks were off and running across the island, the more conventional warriors disembarking from the other two boats behind them.

‘Come on,’ said Bragi. ‘We’ve attacked from the rear of the island for surprise. You go ahead of me; I’m too old to run all the way. Remember, pretty women, fit men, they’re the slaves you’re looking for. The rest, kill ’em for the fear it’ll bring next time.’

Vali stepped from the boat and had the strange sensation of setting foot on foreign soil for the first time in his life. He was inclined to stop and look around him, to see how the place differed from his home, but he knew he couldn’t.

He pressed on in the throng of helmeted warriors from the knarrs, all of them carrying shields, chasing the fast-moving unarmoured berserks inland. The island was flat and not too long, but he could see no buildings on it. They moved quickly and, as they crested a small ridge, found the first bodies, four old men dead in a furrowed field. He could tell they were old by their white hair; their features gave no clue to their age. The men had been mutilated, their heads cut and cut again, stamped on and kicked.

Vali took them for slaves, as they were dressed very plainly and the two heads that were still anything like intact were shaved completely at the front, the hair left long behind, which he thought must be the sign of the lowest rank, a mark of their subjugation. There were farm implements lying discarded around them, rakes and hoes, but more than could be used by just four. Vali wondered why they hadn’t simply sat down and been taken prisoner. Why should a slave fight for his owner? Then he realised what had happened. He thought of the chanting of the men on the boat and the consumption of those mushrooms, the frenzy of the dash for the shore. There would be no surrendering to the berserks. There were three paths of action available to the people on the island, run, fight or die. The other slaves had fled, leaving only these old ones behind. Vali shook his head. If the berserks were on a killing rampage it greatly reduced the chances of them getting anything valuable from the raid. A slave was worth as much as gold in some ways.

He ran on, up a long incline. There was some sort of sound. At first he took it for the crying of gulls, but then, as he got nearer, it became easier to identify. Human screaming. It was high-pitched and desperate, counterpointed with low roars of aggression. Smoke was already in the air.

There, towards the beach below him, was a settlement of around fifteen houses. He was struck that they were the wrong shape. There were a couple of big halls like a king might own but the huts that surrounded them were all tiny and circular. That was wrong, he thought — huts should be square, perhaps with bowed sides but not round. He had never seen anything like them. He found them very exotic and exciting, and he very much wanted to go inside one to see what it was like.

Then there were the people. Vali had rarely seen so many in one place, all men too, panicking under the axes of the berserks. Only a few were making an effort at resistance; most were running for their lives.

He stood watching the attack for some time, watching the huts burn, watching the berserks hack down the men. All the enemy, thought Vali, appeared to be slaves, all with that strange shaved head at the front, the hair long at the rear. Vali couldn’t help noticing that none of the berserks had actually bothered to take any plunder. With that in mind, he looked down the hill towards the biggest building, the one with the cross on the roof, which he took for a temple. If anything was to be retrieved, he thought, he had better do it before the whole settlement was reduced to ashes.

Bragi had made the top of the hill and put his hand to Vali’s shoulder.

‘Draw your weapon, prince,’ he said.

‘I hardly think that’s going to be necessary,’ said Vali. ‘There’s no resistance at all.’

‘Best to have something in your hand in case our men of Odin run out of West Men to spear,’ he said. ‘Nothing like the sight of a sword to remind them whose side they’re on.’

Vali shook his head — he could hardly believe what he was hearing. Still, he unsheathed his sword. It was a good one, a single-edged seax sent to him by his father, more a very large knife than a true sword but strong, short and straight with a whalebone pommel. He felt embarrassed by it and wished he had a plainer weapon. Still, he left his shield at the top of the hill. He didn’t see any point carrying it because, even from this distant vantage point, he knew he was at more risk fighting with staves with Adisla’s brothers than he was here.

It was, he thought, instructive what panic could do. Some of the West Men had managed to make off down the beach, but others, their wits frightened away by the shock of the raid, had just run into the sea and were attempting to swim for it. Vali didn’t fancy their chances. He had a good sailor’s eye, and the water between the island and the mainland looked a prime spot for currents.

He came down to the big building. It was even taller than he had thought from far away, with long thin windows cut into overlapping logs. On the ground outside lay the remains of a stone carving that the berserks had smashed. It was finely wrought cross within a wheel, about two handspans across. It was beautiful, thought Vali, and he almost felt like taking it home with him.

The berserks were hammering at the door of the temple, unable to get in, screaming and jabbering. From a burning hut, one brought a brand, cursing and muttering as he did.

‘Tell him to forget that,’ said Vali to Bragi.

Bragi gave a little start. He was unused to Vali expressing a view on anything. The boy’s manner, thought the bodyguard, was not unlike his father’s.

‘Put that down!’ said Bragi. The berserk took no notice and threw the torch up onto the thatch. Luckily, it was high and steep, and the brand tumbled off.

Bragi looked at Vali and shrugged. Some of the farmers from Eikund came up. They had caught one of the shaven-headed men, and had stripped him naked, booting him towards the temple.

‘Tell them to open it!’ said one.

The man was old and terrified. He just sank to his knees, put his hands together and jabbered.

‘Open it, you girl, or I’ll cut your throat.’

The voice was Hrolleifr’s, a farmer from up on the hill behind Disa. Vali had thought of him as a gentle man. He often helped Disa take things to market and was skilled at carving. Here he was, though, with the same knife that produced tiny ships, little men, even Vali’s own King’s Table pieces, thrust at the side of a man’s neck.

‘He can’t open it; they’ll have secured it from the inside,’ said Vali.

Hrolleifr shrugged and cut the man’s throat. A thick spray of blood pulsed into the air, soaking the farmer, and the man fell forward, kicking and squealing on the floor.

Hrolleifr turned to the other raiders and shouted, ‘See me in my battle sweat. See how I spread the slaughter dew among the warriors of the enemy.’

Everyone else laughed and clapped. Vali couldn’t believe that he was boasting about what he had done. The man had been old. It was harder, much harder, to stick a pig. Was this what they amounted to, all those tales of glory? Killing old men who were begging for their lives. Vali wanted this to end, and quickly, the quicker to return to the boats. He needed to get into the temple as fast as possible. The prospect of plunder might prevent further pointless murder.

The screams were becoming more distant. Everyone on the island who could run had run, and most of the berserks were pursuing them. A brief silence descended over the houses. Vali breathed in. The odour of smoke against the chill of the summer morning was wonderful to him.

The roof was too high to reach, the doors were impregnable. If they had long enough, it would be possible to dig under the walls. There was a chance though, that he could get in at a window. It was too narrow for any of the bigger men, but he was so much smaller.

‘Bragi,’ he said, gesturing with his eyes to the window, ‘make sure no idiot burns it while I’m inside.’ He took off his sword belt and stripped off all three tunics he was wearing as armour.

Bragi helped him onto his shoulders. Vali could reach the narrow slit of the window but couldn’t gain any proper purchase on it.

‘Stand on my head,’ said Bragi, straightening his helmet.

Vali did so, and managed to get a second hand into the gap and lever himself up.

He forced one shoulder in, wriggled and pushed, and finally he was through, dropping onto a table directly beneath him.

There were four windows in the building and their light made it easy to see. At first his impression was just colour — silvers and golds, a large embroidery on the wall to his right, the door with its bar to the left. His eyes adjusted and he saw the men. There were four of them, with shaven heads, two with large candlesticks, one with a weighty silver cross. Only one, a man of his age, thirteen or so, was unarmed. It was then that Vali realised — he had forgotten his weapon.

The men didn’t charge him, which he thought stupid, because he would open the door if not knocked down. They just stood shouting at him. He recognised some familiar words in their odd language.

‘God, redeemer, help.’ The man with the cross thrust it forward, shook it at him, and said something Vali didn’t understand at all.

‘ Helsceada, Helsceada, Helsceada. Satan!’

Then the man said something else he could make out, although the accent was heavy and strange. ‘Flee me!’

Were they casting a spell on him? Vali didn’t feel like he was being enchanted. There was a renewed clamour at the door and some more snatches of sentences came through.

‘Burn, Odin! Blood swan! Inciter!’

Vali stood up from his crouch. He didn’t get off the table because he wanted to appear tall to emphasise his royal status. There were four men, all of working age, and a reasonable quantity of silver. That wasn’t a bad haul. First, though, he had to subdue them unarmed. All he had was words, and he knew only half of those would be understood.

‘I think it’s you who should have fled,’ said Vali. ‘There are wolves and bears outside this door. Shall I feed you to them?’

He dropped off the table, went to the door and made to open it.

The men jabbered but didn’t rush him. There was a clang. His seax had been thrown through the window.

Vali looked at the weapon. He made a gesture of refusal towards it.

‘No need for that,’ he said, ‘if you’re sensible. Better a slave than a dead man, I think.’

One of the men spoke. Vali understood some of the words.

‘Inroad from the sea. The hand of — ’ and there was that word again ‘- Satan in this.’

‘Just a good ship and the blessing of the gods,’ said Vali.

‘One god,’ said the man. ‘Christ Jesus.’ He pointed to the embroidery.

Vali looked at it. It was a strange but beautiful representation of Odin suspended from a tree, a spear piercing his side. It was a depiction, he felt, of the god’s quest for wisdom at the well of Mimir, where he had given up his eye for knowledge. But if these men were Odin’s, where was their fury and their fight? He couldn’t imagine walking into a place holy to the berserks and coming away alive.

‘He is on our side, not yours,’ said Vali. ‘Lay down your weapons and submit. I offer you my protection. On oath.’

The one word seemed to get through. ‘Protection.’

The men looked at each other. Then they put down the heavy silver and sank to their knees, pressing their hands together and muttering. The banging at the door became even louder. He walked up to the men in front of him.

One of them held a strange oblong object, like a slab of leather. Vali went to take it from him but the man held on. Vali wondered what it was that he should cling to it more dearly than silver. He went to the table, where there was another of these slabs. He picked it up and looked at it. It was paler on three sides than it was on the fourth. The pale edges seemed to be pressed together in layers. He went to put it back down but, as he did so, it fell open. Inside were lots of papers, like he’d seen Veles Libor carrying. The squiggly writing was all over them, along with some beautiful pictures. Then Vali saw it — these slaves could teach him to write. They valued these papers so they must be able to read them.

‘Lord!’

There was a face at the window.

‘Bragi!’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘How did you get up there?’

‘A ladder, lord.’

Vali laughed. ‘You could’ve saved your head, if we’d thought to look. I’m going to open the doors. Make sure no one, and I mean no one, harms the slaves I’ve taken. They’re my property. Can you make those Odin-blind idiots understand? ’

‘I can try, lord.’

‘Three knocks when you’re ready.’

Vali knew the challenge he would face once the doors were open and so, making gestures of calm, he picked up his seax and took the old man with the slab of leather by the arm. He was the least useful as a slave and the most at risk.

After a short time he heard the three knocks and removed the bar.

Light flooded the church as the doors opened. Two berserks rushed past him carrying spears and burning brands.

‘No!’ said Vali, but it was too late. Two of the slaves were stabbed and fell; one other — the young man of Vali’s age — ran for it, dragging the old man with him.

‘No killing!’ shouted Vali. Luckily the men fell into the hands of Bragi and the farmers and were merely smashed to the floor with pommel blows.

‘Silver!’ shouted Vali, and that was enough: the rest of the men poured into the church.

Vali didn’t know what to do to save his captives. Acting on instinct, he pushed them both up the hill at sword point, back towards the longship. It occurred to him to let them go but he was fascinated to learn how to write and saw it as a key to developing and maintaining his kingdom, when he came to rule it. Also Vali had met very few foreigners before and was interested to talk to them. These men, he thought, might have something interesting to teach him.

As they got back to the top of the hill, he picked up his shield and looked down. Now the church and the little huts were all on fire. Livestock was being rounded up and driven towards them. The men with Vali began to weep. Vali looked at them properly for the first time. They were clearly slaves, he thought, as their rough clothes and shaven heads denoted. Even slaves develop a bond with a place though. Again he noticed how enchanting the island looked: the sparkle of the sun on the ocean, the thick line of smoke stretching out over the sea to the mainland beyond like an enchanted causeway, the fires themselves. In the face of such beauty, it was difficult to remember that it was a scene of destruction.

He pressed on to the ships and, when he got to them, was the first back apart from five or six guards.

‘Good plunder?’ asked one as he arrived.

Vali just gestured to the slaves with his seax.

The guard nodded. ‘One of them’s a bit old, but the other one’ll be worth a bit at Kaupangen.’

He was talking about the big southern market. Vali had heard of it but never visited it. These captives weren’t going there; he had plans for them.

‘They’re mine,’ he said.

The guard shrugged. ‘Depending on the split,’ he said.

‘They’re mine,’ said Vali. ‘I’m the one who made the effort to save them, the others are more interested in easy kills than taking prisoners.’ The guard shrugged again and sat down on the shore.

‘See what the berserks say,’ he said.

It was nightfall before everyone returned. Vali sat by the fire and watched as herds of sheep and cows were driven to the ships. There were no slaves. Vali could hardly believe how wasteful the raid had been. All the loot from the church was piled up, along with flagons of wine that didn’t remain untouched for long. Some men even came with bales of hay they had stolen, more than would be needed to feed the animals on the short journey back. Vali was thankful that there were pebbles on the beach at home, otherwise he felt sure they’d be returning with a full haul of those too.

The berserks had taken no prisoners, though they had a quantity of coin and some silver plates, along with about ten slaughtered geese.

A change came over these men with the end of the day. They were no longer the baying animals he had seen get off the boat. Instead, they seemed listless, weak even, hardly talking, just crouching by the fires and staring into the flames through red and angry eyes.

‘Lord.’

‘Yes?’

It was Bragi’s hand on his shoulder.

‘Did you not hear me? We are to put out to sea. This island is linked to the mainland by a causeway that is open at low tide. We should leave. The burning buildings may have drawn attention to us and we risk counter-attack if we stay here.’

‘Why burn them then?’ said Vali.

‘What?’

‘If the fires give away our position then why light them? Surely it would’ve been better to plunder the place in secrecy.’

‘The berserks will have their fires,’ said Bragi.

The animals were loaded onto the ships, thrown in, roped in, hauled in, until the vessels were perilously low in the water. Some of the bigger creatures couldn’t be fitted in and were slaughtered at the beach and tied behind the ships. They would be dragged back, as long as the ropes didn’t break.

Vali waited with his slaves to take his place in the drakkar.

The helmsman was counting.

‘No room for those two,’ he said.

Vali looked at him. ‘You’ll make room. I want them for my slaves.’

‘Lord, it would mean offloading valuable animals. The boy is sickly and the man’s old and not much good for work.’

Vali could, he supposed, just let them go. The raiders would be long gone before they could help any pursuers. Still, he reminded himself of who he was. He’d spent so long at Adisla’s hearth among farm children that he sometimes forgot.

‘Princes need different work to common men.’

‘Lord, I-’

There was a scream and the old man fell to the ground.

In the firelight Vali saw the gleam of a knife and the red eyes of Bodvar Bjarki, the scarred berserk who had attacked him. Then there was a sudden movement and the boy cried out and fell too.

‘Debate over, prince,’ said the berserk. He could hardly stand. He seemed torpid and sluggish but had still stabbed both men in an instant.

For the first time in Vali’s life he felt genuinely angry, violent even, and as that emotion touched him he felt a chill go through him. This wasn’t the sort of rage that explodes in fury but an insidious, crawling thing, as present and real as the smell of smoke across a summer meadow. Vali was frightened by the intensity of the feeling. He would, he thought, have his revenge. It came to him not as an intention but as a fact, as real and unavoidable as the engulfing night, the endless stars and the cold dark sea. It was the first time in his life he could remember feeling hatred, and the sensation was almost intoxicating.

The raiders were around him, their faces expectant. Vali, though, would not give them what they were asking for — a demand for compensation, a challenge to a duel. Instead he smiled at the berserk and said, ‘I will not forget you.’

Bodvar Bjarki just grunted, huddled into his cloak and made his way onto the ship.

Vali bent to the old man. Dead. Then he went to the boy. He was breathing but Vali could see he was dreadfully pale and close to death. He held him in his arms to give him comfort. The boy looked up. Vali had expected to see blame or hatred. Instead, he saw something else. Understanding, sympathy, pity even. He found it chilling.

The boy looked at Vali and said a word he recognised: ‘God.’

Well, he doesn’t seem to have done you much good, does he? thought Vali, but he said nothing. In a few moments the boy had stopped breathing.

Vali climbed aboard a knarr. He had no intention of spending the journey home with the berserks.

He took an oar without a word, listening to the men around him swapping stories of the raid. Farmer Hrolleifr told how he had faced the enemy’s leader and cut him to the floor. He omitted to say that the man was naked, kneeling and begging for his life at the time. Others told tales of taking on two or three enemies at once, leaving out inconvenient facts such as that their opponents had been unarmed. The most remarkable thing about the stories of the returning warriors was that they seemed to believe them themselves.

He looked over to the drakkar as the ships pulled away from the beach. The one West Man the berserks had saved had been hanged, sacrificed to Odin in thanks for their safe return. As Vali watched the man dangling from the mast, his legs kicking as if in a useless attempt to run away, he made up his mind that he would never seek that god’s help. His followers, he thought, dishonoured him.

‘I hate you, Odin,’ he said, ‘and I will oppose you in all your works.’

For some reason that made him feel better and he bent his back to the oar, losing himself in the rhythm of the rowing, thought banished by effort.