Wolfsangel

31

On his way back from Hemming’s hall Vali came across Bragi and Feileg looking out at the small harbour, the wolfman seeming almost slight next to the bulk of Bragi.

‘Hemming’s men must have a thirst on them. Do you think we’ll get any of that?’ said Bragi as Vali came to his side.

On Skardi’s order the chain on the harbour wall was being lowered to allow a small squat boat containing five huge barrels of wine to enter. Bragi explained that the whole settlement had been talking about the delivery. A boy had arrived with a message from the town while Vali was seeing Hemming. Veles Libor sends his best wishes to the king, his finest wine a small token of thanks for all the king does for the people of Haithabyr, said the messenger.

‘It’s an apology,’ said Vali.

‘Right enough,’ said Bragi.

Both men knew the real reason for Veles Libor’s generosity was that word had reached Hemming the merchant hadn’t informed him of his contact with a foreign prince. It wasn’t exactly a hanging offence but neither could it be overlooked. As soon as Veles could get his hands on quality wine he had sent it to the king to improve Hemming’s deliberations on what should happen to him.

‘I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t have to pay a lot more than that,’ said Bragi. ‘Authun would have had his head for such a crime if he’d been in the wrong mood.’

‘He’d be a fool then,’ said Gyrth, the Norse-speaking retainer who had been looking after them during their stay. ‘Veles is the best-connected merchant in the world. The tribute he pays the king buys many a byrnie and blade. And look! It’s Styrman the skald. Where did they get him from! Styrman! Hey, Styrman!’

A man disembarking waved his arm in the air. He was tall and thin, though with a drinker’s face, and he carried a lyre under his arm, not wrapped up at all. There, thought Vali, was someone who valued his reputation as a skald more than the health of the instrument that earned him a living. Every skald he had ever met had been showy like that. They almost had to be, in order to succeed in their profession.

‘Veles sent his best boat east for me,’ shouted the skald, ‘and demanded that I accompany his wine here.’

‘A story! A story!

‘Tonight,’ said the skald, ‘when the mead is drunk and we are drunker!’

The wine was heaved off the boat onto the foreshore and some men began rolling the barrels up towards the king’s hall while, from throughout the settlement, people came to see Styrman. Vali had seen skalds before and met a few popular ones, but this man seemed to have everyone’s attention. From the shouted requests of the crowd, he could see why.

‘Tell us of Ofeig the Hobbler and Ivar Horse Cock!’

A young man cried out, ‘We will beat you in flyting. No insult contest can you win, you who was raised so womanly!’ He was laughing but good-natured.

‘I am afraid of flyting with you, young fellow. Your balls have to drop sometime and, should they do so during the duel of jibes, the noise might put me off what I have to say. Clang!’

The crowd seemed to find this hilarious, much funnier than Vali thought it was. Still the skald was well liked, it seemed, and if he was an expert in flyting it would be interesting to hear him. People would come from miles around to test their wits against such a man. It was said that a good skald could best a hundred opponents in an evening’s drinking, each one dispatched with a different insult, usually in rhyme.

Vali looked out at the chain and then at the river beyond. The longing he felt inside didn’t even come to him as words, just as a sort of hunger, an ache in his stomach.

He had to find a way to get out. But even if he did escape from the settlement, Hemming would have no problem hunting him down. He would be stopped or killed by fearful farmers if he ran by land. By water the route was easier but still perilous — the best he could manage alone was a faering and even that would be difficult. It was some distance to the sea and the wind was uncertain. A drakkar would be on him before he reached the open ocean.

He walked back to the gloom of the house and sat down. There was no one there for a change, not even women. Everyone had gone outside to see the skald. He picked at some boiled meat in a bowl. And then he came to his answer.

The skald’s performance that evening would give him his chance. But escape was not enough; he needed to do something to stop himself being pursued. If the Danes thought he was dead, then they wouldn’t come after him. The wolfman was his double. He tapped a bone against the bowl and tried to think of a way around the path that had opened before him. He couldn’t. Vali would have to kill Feileg, dress him in his own clothes and then make off. It wouldn’t guarantee him escape — Hemming would certainly want to make a show of finding his guest’s killers — but the hunt would not be nearly so enthusiastic as if he was looking for Vali himself.

He worked out the details. He would need to get a Danish cloak to wrap himself in. The guards would be drunk or distracted by the skald and Vali thought he could just walk out. The wolfman could steal a cloak. When he returned to give it to Vali, he would kill him. Vali said the words in his mind, to fix himself in his purpose: ‘I will kill him.’ It was the best way, he knew. And yet that vision kept returning — the cave, the wolfman’s body bent into the shape of that strange rune, his own body, and that of Adisla, similarly contorted. He felt anxious. What would happen if he failed? The wolfman would kill him and Adisla would be alone.

Bragi had told him that his father Authun was famous for cold thinking — for seeing what needed to be done and doing it without regard to emotion or affection. Was it not rumoured that he had taken nine warriors with him to the mountain witches, knowing they would die? He had needed them so he had taken them. The wolfman was not Vali’s kinsman either, but an outlaw who had killed many men.

Vali had not been disarmed — that would have been a dishonour too far and an admission that the Danes feared him. He only had to remove his sword when he entered Hemming’s hall. He remembered the beach, the wolfman thrashing after him in the water, and thought that he should have let him drown. He couldn’t account for what had made him risk his own life saving him. Perhaps it was fate, saving the wolfman for the greater purpose of aiding his escape, Vali thought.

As the idea fixed itself in his mind, he found himself seeking justifications for what he was about to do. Feileg was dangerous. He had exposed them by his actions in the town. He drew attention to them wherever they went. On top of all that, he had some attraction for Adisla that unnerved Vali. Could he trust Feileg if they did find her? No. He’d seen the looks the wolfman gave him and could sense what Feileg felt towards him. Feileg wanted Vali dead but he needed him to find Adisla. As soon as that was done, Vali knew Feileg would attack him.

‘I am a wolf,’ the wolfman liked to say. So he needed to be treated like one.

Still, Vali didn’t relish what he had to do. It was, he told himself, simply his best chance. Would he include Bragi in the escape? Yes, of course. Whatever the wisdom of trying to make it alone, he couldn’t kill a kinsman or abandon one to die. He had set sail to find Adisla but he would have done the same for Bragi. He may have found the old man a bore, but he was a bore he was related to, and that solid fact removed all debate.

Vali drifted off to sleep, allowing the familiar aromas of the longhouse to take him back to his childhood at Disa’s hearth. He remembered Adisla and the warmth of her against him in the long winter evenings as they’d sat listening to the old stories of how the dwarfs made treasure for the gods, or of the never-ending battle fought by the war dead in the afterlife. There were other, better stories too — tales of farm life, of how Disa had tricked her husband into wiping his arse with a nettle in return for a beating he’d given her, of the funny things they’d said as children, of how the Rygir had suffered, fought and fled before marriage and trade had brought peace — or so they thought — to their lands. To find Adisla again, to have her sit by him as they listened to stories in the night, he would kill a thousand wolfmen, skin them and hang out their hides for the ravens to peck at.

All he needed to do was wait for darkness.