Berserker (Omnibus)

by Robert Holdstock

  Later he went back into the hut and confirmed his other fear. The man on the pallet was his father. He knelt by the still form and stared at the drawn face, at the closed eyes, and felt like weeping again, but he had spent all his tears on Elena.

  The snow ceased to fall, the wind died, and a brighter light filled the hut, spilling in through the door.

  The old man stirred.

  Harald started with surprise. He had believed his father dead, had been convinced of it. From the pallor of his skin to the stillness of his chest he had believed the signs were of a man recently dead, and frozen in an attitude of sleep.

  But Bluetooth was not dead. Now he turned his fading eyes on his son, realised who it was and could not suppress the flicker of fear that swept across his face as a cloud’s shadow sweeps across the land.

  ‘It’s Harald … your son, if you still wish to recognise me as such …’

  No response. The blue eyes bored deeply into Harald’s, searching him, searching the mind beyond the eyes, and it seemed, after a while, that Bluetooth saw the bear that lurked there, watching and feeling angry that there was no action to be had.

  The old man became frightened. Harald restrained him, but knew that no words of comfort could be uttered to this man who – if Harald were to have the chance of survival – would have to die.

  ‘The Berserker in me is calm,’ he said. ‘There shall be no violence now, father. I seek release from this curse. The boy who left this hold so violently was not me. It was a bear that possessed my body, and the one thing above all that I seek is the love of those my body abused.’

  The old man turned away, his eyes staring at the ceiling, tears forming in their corners. His thin, pale lips moved. He spoke. Harald drew close to try and hear what he said.

  ‘I let them in,’ he was saying.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Harald. ‘Father, I don’t understand.’

  Bluetooth stared at his son and slowly, from beneath the layer of hides, his frail hand emerged and plucked at Harald’s sleeve until at last Harald held that hand, shocked by the bonyness of it, and the coldness, the deadness.

  ‘I let them in,’ said Bluetooth, louder now. ‘If not for my weakness … none of this …’

  Harald knew what he meant. He had let the Berserks in, that long winter ago. He had been weak and had not had the spiritual courage to bar them from the hold, for fear of what they might do. In the end they had repaid his weakness, and his charity, with the total destruction of the settlement.

  But Harald could not find fault with the old man. ‘Father … it’s done, and there’s no undoing it, and if you think that I feel any malice towards you, then stop thinking it. I feel only sadness that our family life came to such an awful end. I feel only bitterness at what I did. I feel only anxiety that you should forgive me before … before we both die.’

  ‘I shall die soon,’ murmured Bluetooth; his grip on Harald’s hand grew strong, the gaze more urgent.

  Did he know? Did he sense the fate that awaited him, death at the hand of his own son?

  Harald could find no words of encouragement. What could he say? Empty words promising many years of life yet would have choked him. The man had minutes left, and something in the air, in Harald’s gaze, perhaps, had told him of the fact.

  But he said, ‘I dreamed of this moment.’

  ‘This meeting? You dreamed it?’ Coldness stirred his heart.

  Bluetooth nodded, closed his eyes. ‘With Elena … poor, crazy Elena … I have survived here since you left, knowing that you would come back, knowing that I would be needed. The others left. Only ghosts remain. Your mother took young Nils and I have not seen or heard of them since. But I stayed.’ He looked at Harald. ‘And last night I dreamed of what must happen. It pleases me. The forgiveness warms me. Even if the deed chills me. Be swift, Harald. Be direct. I have suffered too much pain; I fear only the pain of death. The fact of it pleases me, even though I don’t understand why you have to do it.’

  Harald wept on the blankets, holding Bluetooth’s hand so tight that the old man cried with pain and tried to ease the grip.

  The bear prowled restlessly, sensing the approaching blood fury, but Harald choked it back, cursed it, swore at it through his tears. Bluetooth slept quietly, his eyes tight shut, a slight smile on his lips. For ages Harald just stared at him, at the peacefulness that had come into his face.

  As the old man slept Harald told him why … why he had to kill him, how it would help release him, and with every word the hand that he held grew warmer, the gaunt cheeks filled out.

  By his weakness Bluetooth had allowed the Berserks to steal his son. By his death, he knew now, he could give his son release. In this country a death was paid for according to the value of the person killed. It was the way of things; though it was a hard law, it was a fair law, and had been the tradition for generations.

  Bluetooth had killed his son’s soul. His heart blood was the price of that death, and he would give it happily, and gratefully, for it released him, too – released him from his mortal burden of guilt, from contemplation of the decay his failing had caused.

  After an hour the old man fell into a deeper sleep, his head turning from Harald, the grip on Harald’s hand becoming weaker, more relaxed.

  Elena crept into the hut, sat giggling just inside the door, and after a moment Harald chased her off. She ran screaming across the snow, and out through the palisade, vanishing from sight. Harald touched the dried blood on his face, and wondered whether there was any hope for her, or whether the sword for her, too, was a kinder release than pity.

  Then he went back to his father and pulled the skins from his naked body, exposed the shrunken chest, where his living heart beat feebly.

  Taking the shield from his back he laid it on the floor, then drew his sword and kissed the bloody blade.

  Lifted it in his two hands and swiftly ended Bluetooth’s life.

  ‘Har … ald …!’

  The cry drifted across the country, and reached Harald’s ears where he knelt, beside the corpse of his father, quietly contemplating the life they had shared during his childhood years.

  Harald looked up, wondering if it was his imagination, if the wind played tricks on him.

  But the cry came again, the shouted sound of his name …

  ‘Sigurd!’ he cried delighted. He jumped to his feet and cast a last glance at the white face of Bluetooth, then covered the face with a cow skin and reached down for his shield, now glistening redly where he had smeared the old man’s blood across the metal.

  He ran to the entrance of the hut and, smiling, stared up towards the distant ridge, shouting, ‘Sigurd, you old rogue …’

  He froze.

  Six shapes straddled the ridge, staring down, waving swords in the bright air, and the sound of their laughter was a chilling sound, more mournful than the storm winds that blew across the lowlands.

  Of Sigurd Gotthelm there was no sign.

  He walked up the ridge to meet them, sword held ready, shield carried before him, and clutched so firmly in his hand that the thong bit deep into his flesh. Not for anything would he let go this precious armour, not for the world would he release his hold on his father’s death gift to him, and the chance for release it promised.

  The Berserks didn’t move, even when he stopped before them, feeling the cold wind catch his hair and blow it in unkempt strands about his face. More snow threatened as dark clouds rolled above them. The skeletal trees whispered in the wind, creaked and rustled as their dark branches, like fingers, waved and clutched at the air.

  Beartooth faced him directly; almost exactly as Harald remembered him, though bloodier, somehow more gruesome to regard. He had lost the necklace of teeth, perhaps during the sacking of the tiny village and Harald wondered if it was the Berserker’s intention to replace its loss with his own pegs.

  He smiled at the thought, and the Berserker, sensing arrogance, grinned back.

  ‘You come to fetch your
fate, eh? Well, don’t be in a hurry. My sword itches for you, but my soul desires your suffering.’

  ‘My sword has an itch for you, too,’ said Harald, trying desperately, in his gradually whirling mind, to think of casual, witty things to say. A movement to his right caught his attention and Beartooth’s too, and both men looked to where Elena crept slowly up through the snow, her eyes alive with fire, a short knife clutched in her hand. The wind blew her ragged, filthy robe against her body, outlining her body, outlining the thinness of her flesh.

  Beartooth laughed. ‘The slut who felt our axes comes for revenge too.’

  ‘I shall revenge her,’ said Harald.

  The bear began to come forward, interested in what was happening, but perhaps not expecting to be pitted against its own kind. All were calm, all Berserk furies held in low key. Harald had to find that fury before they did, but how, he wondered, how in the absence of spilled blood, when the first spilled blood is likely to be my own? That would provoke the rage in them all, and then it would be six whirling furies against one, and he would have no hope of surviving to find Sigurd, and receive his mortal gift, the final wound that he would hope to survive.

  The light of anger began to glow in Beartooth’s eyes, and Harald sensed the six Berserks forcing themselves into the rage they felt they needed. They stood there, fur-clad, ragged creatures, giant and bestial, smeared and stained, and watched the youth through slit eyes that shone malevolently.

  Harald felt afraid. He was not ashamed to admit the fact. He felt afraid.

  Elena crept on, and her occasional wail served only to amuse Beartooth, though Harald sensed in the unearthly cry some desperate need for revenge, some sense of impending triumph, as if the madness had obscured the fact that she had no chance at all of biting the flesh of these terrifying creatures of the night.

  And then a second wail cut across the moaning of the girl.

  The wolf.

  It caused Harald to blanch and tense. He looked away from Beartooth and saw the great black shape racing towards him, ploughing through the snow, and almost grinning as its fierce jaws opened and its great red tongue lolled and licked the air.

  All the Berserks heard the wolf, and all turned to regard it. When they looked back at Harald there was fear in their eyes.

  Their rages began, the flushing of their faces, the heat radiating from them, the animal stench rising from their skins.

  The wolf came nearer, roaring, now, and watching Harald as if it were interested only in him, only in his own soft flesh.

  Harald knew that he had to act quickly.

  Raising his shield to his lips he licked the coating of blood, and, though the Berserker spirit had remained quiet during the spilling of it, now – as its bitter taste filled his mouth – he burst into the spontaneous rage, and began to kill …

  Mind whirling.

  Redness sweeping before his eyes.

  Skin burning, mind burning, a dark whirlpool sucking mortal considerations down into the hellish depths of oblivion.

  His first blow hacked the head from Whiteclaw’s body, and the corpse fell twitching and spurting across the snow. The stink of blood, the sudden carnage, induced the rage in them all.

  Already Harald was among them, a whirling mad thing, his scream carrying into the dark void itself.

  He had killed two of them before they could orientate themselves, and then they hacked at Harald, and whirled and darted, and screamed as well, and the sight was terrifying to observe, save that no one observed who possessed the faculty of fright.

  Harald’s body was cut and split in a hundred places, but his pure invulnerability kept him alive. His own blade tore and hacked at his adversaries, so that gouts of blood stained the snow, and fingers and ears flew through the crisp air, unnoticed by the loser, who still kept fighting.

  The wolf reached the group and Harald, still furious, turned on it. But it leapt past him and bore one of the other Berserks to the ground, tearing out his throat in an instant.

  A second Berserker fell beneath the vast body of the wolf, which seemed to tower over Harald and cast a grey shadow across his bitter, mindless fight with Beartooth.

  Beartooth knocked him to the ground, and he slipped and slid down the slope. The great screaming Berserk leader raced after him, yelling with triumph, blood pouring from his face where twenty slits had reduced his features to a red meat mask of hate.

  As he towered over Harald, a small shape leapt upon him from behind. Harald struggled to his feet to be drenched by the great gout of blood that spilled from Beartooth’s severed throat; the giant man just stood there, frozen in death, sword raised, eyes staring down towards the hold.

  Elena slid from his back and shrieked her insane laughter, waving the bloodied knife as she leapt at Harald.

  Harald fended her off, and struck at her with his sword, cutting a thin layer of her scalp so that a strand of golden hair blew away across the snowfield.

  Something in him could not allow the monster to kill her. He ran away from her, vaguely aware that she had avenged at least part of the brutal rape of her body.

  She scampered after him, but stopped when she saw the huge wolf appear above her, staring down at Harald.

  Harald didn’t stop. He charged on up the ridge, and when he came up to the towering wolf he stared straight into its glowing eyes, oblivious of the hungry mouth and the stench of death that came from its lungs. He raised his sword …

  ‘No!’ cried a voice, and Harald hesitated for just a second, confused, unsure, in the strange emotional state that was half Berserk rage and half human desire to kill the haunter of his dreams, unsure from where that voice had come.

  But he recognised it.

  ‘Sigurd!’ he yelled, staring round quickly, searching for his friend. ‘Sigurd, quick. I kill the wolf. Help me.’

  Then he rammed the blade between the strangely passive wolf’s ribs, and drew it out quickly, jumping back as the wolf’s great howl of pain deafened him.

  ‘Harald, no!’ cried Sigurd.

  ‘Where are you?’ shrieked Harald, turning round and round, searching the bloodstained snowfield and seeing nothing. Was this another of Odin’s tricks? Was he losing his mind?

  The great wolf writhed and kicked, as blood erupted from the wound. It seemed that it would survive and Harald ran at it again. He thrust his sword once more into its body, so that a great red tear spilled the wolf’s blood in a boiling flood, and the snow sizzled and melted beneath the heat.

  ‘SIGURD!’ cried Harald, as he killed the wolf. ‘WHERE ARE YOU?’

  ‘You kill me,’ moaned Sigurd, and Harald stopped in the middle of his third thrust, and stared wide-eyed and frightened at the squirming beast before him.

  Silver sparkled on the wolf’s skull. The muzzle faded and a familiar bearded face, twisted with pain, stared at him.

  The great dark body shrivelled and shrank and a fur-clad warrior lay there.

  Sigurd Gotthelm, clutching the gashes in his chest, stared up at Harald through eyes filled not with hate, but with sadness.

  Harald screamed and dropped his sword staring at the dying warrior, almost incapable of thinking clearly.

  ‘By Thor’s great swing, what have I done? What have I done?’

  He dropped to his knees and cradled Gotthelm’s head in his arms. Blood dribbled from the corner of the warrior’s mouth, and his pain-filled eyes were dull as he stared up at Harald.

  The bear writhed in merriment, rolled around and laughed, but crept back into his mind and left the freezing human to cope with the situation.

  Gotthelm smiled, shallowly. ‘I thought this might happen.’

  ‘Sigurd. My good friend … the wolf … I thought …’

  Gotthelm shook his head, hushed the younger man. ‘You couldn’t know. And when we rode together and the wolf haunted your dreams, not even I realised what it meant.’

  ‘You were with me,’ said Harald, feeling tears sting his eyes against the cold that stang them perpetu
ally. ‘How could the wolf have been you …?’

  ‘You dreamed of destiny …’ said the warrior, gasping with pain. ‘You saw destiny and it came to you in dreams. The wolf and the bear …’ He grinned. ‘The wolf and the bear … I didn’t realise it when I saw the Keeper … it never occurred to me …’

  Harald was confused. He shook his head. Gotthelm tensed and relaxed as pain racked his body.

  He said, ‘The Keeper gave me the means to follow you as fast as you Berserks ride, which is unnaturally fast. A wolf. It was the best way. Only a wolf could match your pace. I followed you and you outwitted me. My cry couldn’t penetrate your skull. But until we met on this ridge the transformation was permanent. You would give me release, and I would give release to you. I forgot the bear, and the fear it holds for the wolf of the north …’

  ‘Sigurd, Sigurd …’ Harald wept openly as he held the man to his breast. ‘You … you all the time … I could have met you at the cliffs … I could have waited for you anywhere, but I feared you.’ He looked up into the clouds. ‘Odin, you make fools even of friends!’ he cried. ‘Truly your evil is greater than the Evil One himself!’

  Thunder rolled across the heavens, god-wind howled with laughter, hysterical laughter, the One-Eyed demon prancing with pleasure as he watched the scene below him.

  Gotthelm reached up and removed his silver skull helmet. ‘See?’ he said, and Harald took the helmet from the older man and looked to where, once, there had been a bear and a wolf in deadly combat.

  Now there was just blankness, bare metal, gleaming.

  ‘Not my death,’ said Gotthelm. He smiled. ‘I’m grateful Harald. I thought that picture showed my death and I feared it. Now it is gone, and I will still live to fight another year. Don’t worry over me …’

  Harald dropped the helmet to the ground and hugged his friend. He had forgotten that Gotthelm’s destiny was to live until the scenes depicted on his helmet were all played through.

  He would live. The terrible wounds given him by the Berserker would not claim his spirit for the dark benches of Valhalla.