Berserker (Omnibus)

by Robert Holdstock

  Now the sound of Roman drums drifted across to the Britons; and the harsh bleating of buccinae, calling the men to station, instructing the various centuries where to go and what to do. Across the green slopes of the mainland, the glittering armies of Rome were a complex and efficient activity, streams of men running to the beach, or along the ridges to take a stand ready to be the second wave of attack.

  Through the clearing mist they came, thousands of them, heavily armoured men, clutching broad and long rectangular shields, their huge, narrow-bladed spears held vertically and catching the light in blinding flashes. The rafts swept across the channel, moving towards the island as they also travelled to the west. Two miles of rafts, followed by spluttering and agonised horsemen, and great lines of cavalry threshing their way through the shallower parts of the low-tide straits.

  The warriors of the Britons rained arrows down upon the approaching forces. Some inevitably found their marks, though most were deflected from a roof of shields that was raised to cover each raft.

  The women of the Britons, carrying firebrands and with their hair untied and streaming in the morning wind, raced along the shoreline screeching abuse and calling on the men of the Britons to do the most savage deeds possible to the invader. The voices of the druids became a thunder of invective, a storm of invocation that must have struck terrible fear into the hearts of those who approached the island, though the rafts came steadily onwards, and not a man in the massed ranks there moved or flinched. They were well trained, though whether their calm would last in battle remained to be seen.

  Within minutes the rafts had beached and the first waves of cavalry, water-and mud-drenched, had kicked fast and triumphant up on to the slopes of the island.

  The slaughter was shocking to observe, and none there were among the non-combatants that could bear to watch it for more than a moment. The men of the Roman Legions cut through the ranks of druids and reduced them to twitching, dismembered corpses in seconds; the women were run down and killed most brutally, and those that were young and possessed of any degree of beauty were cruelly stripped and raped repeatedly until the soldiers tired of them and stuck a blade in their bellies, leaving them to die in slow agony.

  The settlements were burned, the thatch, damp with the night’s rain, burning nonetheless, each house becoming a black smoked pyre to the memory of the family that had lived there. The screams of anger and of exhortation turned to screams of pain and terror, and for hours the ridges of land around the island were covered with swarming shapes of Roman and Briton, engaged in a one-sided race for survival.

  The Eagle was raised on the shores of Mona, and the severed heads of the first expedition were taken down and reverently wrapped in cloth. The poles that had sported the skulls of Romans now sprouted the long-haired visages of druids and their women.

  The stench of blood had finally got to him, and Swiftaxe felt the bear surge forward and take control: redness rose before his eyes, and the snarling bear voiced itself through the human cry of anger and lust.

  He drew his great axe and held it high above his head, turned to face Gryddan and Edwynna. The druid drew the girl to him and dragged her back towards a gnarled and leaning tree, pulling her into his shelter.

  Edwynna screamed, seeing the Berserker for the first time as the violent manifestation of evil that he was. Swiftaxe himself began to cry, the war cry of destruction, the wind of death blowing loud and fierce from his lungs.

  But for a second, as the Berserker prepared itself for the killing of all it could find, Caylen reached forward and wrestled with the bear god, the strange form of Odin that possessed him. ‘This is what I am!’ he managed to cry, meaning the words for the druid, Gryddan. ‘This is what I seek to destroy!’

  Then the bear, impatient to taste blood and death, swung its axe high, and brought it down with all its might. The blade cut straight and true towards the screaming girl. It would split her head open with all the ease of a scythe cutting through the tall summer grass.

  At the last moment Caylen, the human, caused the blow the deflect. The blade of the axe thudded into the tree. The Berserker’s hands were white as they clenched the shaft of the great weapon; its face twisted and grimaced, dark and reddened with the blood mania of the bear.

  ‘Run …’ gasped Caylen, the last gesture of humanity that he was capable of. The bear screeched its frustration and flung the warrior back, and the human form, with its face twisted into the mask of its Ursine tormentor, wrenched viciously at the axe, and pulled it free.

  They were near the shore, along a concealed trail, hoping to escape the attention of the Romans. Their escape had been subtle and swift, and cleverly accomplished; but not even Swiftaxe had bargained for the Berserker to take control again.

  He grinned maliciously and raised his axe making ready to destroy the two frail Britons. The excitement within him grew at the thought of their deaths, and the bear urged him forward, the redness flowing before his eyes as a veil of crimson mist, wreathing itself about everything in his vision.

  As he took a step forward, however, a great spear thudded into the trunk of the tree and hung there quivering.

  The Berserker swung round, roaring and snarling with anger.

  A troop of Romans stood there, damp and mud-smeared, some still emerging through the trees from the shoreline. They were all grinning, sensing not only slaughter, but the possibility of rape as well.

  Their dream was short lived, however, for as Edwynna screamed, the Berserker flung himself at the soldiers. They laughed as he came, one man against so many, but their smiles soon turned to grimaces of shock and pain, expressions that remained on their faces as each, inexorably, became human garbage, trampled underfoot.

  Man after man fell, dying, but there were just too many of them, and gradually the berserk rage left Swiftaxe and the human – strong though he was – found himself beaten back by the wild-eyed soldiers as they were urged forward by their commander.

  Distantly, as if from many miles away, Swiftaxe heard Gryddan cry out, ‘Cernunnos, walk the deep waters and save us!’

  No god can help us now, thought Swiftaxe bitterly, and his helmet was knocked from his head, the blade that had struck him drawing blood from his scalp.

  He backed away, raising his axe for one last strike before succumbing, and then there was a scream – not of a single man, but of many men. The Romans backed away, looking to where Swiftaxe’s strange helmet lay in the mud. Their weapons glistened with blood, Swiftaxe’s blood, but were held limply as the bizarre thing that was occurring nearby drove them back in fear.

  One man stood his ground, helmetless, caked in mud and dirt, his sword scarred and stained with the lives of men taken on the shoreline.

  Bedivyg!

  He glared at Swiftaxe, his brother, and his eyes spoke of hatred, now, and of disappointment. He had given Swiftaxe his chance to flee, and the Berserker had rejected the gift. Now, in the look in his brother’s eyes, Swiftaxe saw the grim determination to kill.

  But for a moment Bedivyg’s attention was drawn, like all the minds of his Roman colleagues, to where the Berserker’s helmet lay …

  The mud sizzled and hissed!

  As they watched, so the stubby horns of the helmet began to grow, sprouting into great, black deer antlers.

  It rose from the mud, then, as if someone deeper in the mire was pushing it up on a shield. Massive of shoulder, animal of face, its heavily furred haunches wide and strong, its hoofed feet braced apart and pawing at the soft ground as it glared around.

  Cernunnos, the Animal god of the Dead himself!

  Like a great stag with a human torso, standing three times the height of a man, the enormous beast walked among the Romans and tore them apart with clawed hands that could crush a skull as easily as Swiftaxe could crush an egg. The beast never flinched at the blows the puny men dealt to its leathery flesh. Its snorting roar was, for all the world, like cruel laughter; its animal roar of pain as a spear was thrust deeply into its
leg brought dark carrion birds flocking above the Romans, beating at them with their wings and stabbing with orange beaks. Cernunnos twisted and stamped, picked men up and flung them down to the ground, broke others across the jagged rocks that littered this clearing.

  As the slaughter continued, human screams and the raucous cries of the dark birds filling the woodlands with an awful atmosphere of terror, Swiftaxe noticed his helmet, lying on the ground where the god had risen. He picked it up, and cleaned the mud from its surfaces, standing in the very shadow of the roaring beast. The god had resided in those horns after all! The helmet had not, as Aithlenn had implied all those years ago, been just a helmet, without any other property. It had been one of the earthly homes of the demon stag of War and destruction, and finally that same god had answered the desperate bidding prayers of the druids.

  Blood sprayed the air, and mud and gore flew across the Berserker, making the juices flow into his mouth for a moment, making the bear growl as it sensed the momentary need to join the slaughter. But then Caylen Swiftaxe was in control and he ran to the shallow cave where Gryddan and Edwynna still crouched, in mortal terror for their lives.

  ‘We must go, while the god keeps them busy. Quickly!’

  Gryddan, wordlessly, pointed to the woods. Turning, Swiftaxe saw Bedivyg slipping away through the trees as the stag god destroyed the last of the Roman troop, and turned with an angry, animal cry. It towered over Swiftaxe, and the two frail humans he guarded. Its wide eyes stared at him; its antlers clacked on the branches of trees as it stooped to peer more closely at the Berserker, and Swiftaxe smelled its foul breath, watched the gleaming rivulets of saliva running from the corners of its mouth.

  An enormous fist, covered with dark brown hair, each strand of which was as thick as twine, grasped the Berserker by the neck and lifted him bodily from the ground. Swiftaxe remained motionless and half strangled in the fearsome grip, and felt himself drawn to the lips of the stag, which tasted the sweat and blood on his face. Gagging at the foul vegetable stench that came from Cernunnos’s cavernous mouth, Swiftaxe grinned as best he could. ‘We are kindred spirits, you and I,’ he gasped, and the grip on his neck grew tighter, squeezing the breath from him, making the flesh of his cheeks grow hot and congested.

  ‘Wuutaan,’ said the stag, the word almost lost in the thunder of its voice. ‘Your time of death approaches.’

  The carrion birds screeched and settled about the shoulders and antlers of the god, and Swiftaxe, near unconscious from the lack of breath, felt himself released from the enormously strong grip. He fell to the ground, and sprawled headlong in the mud, but climbed quickly to his feet, massaging his neck mercifully.

  Cernunnos bellowed once, a sound of anger, tainted with the unmistakable sound of laughter, and then turned and walked stiffly, the birds still swarming about its head like flies around a corpse, up the slopes, and inland. How long the god would stay remained to be seen … if his whim was as fickle as that of Odin (how easily Swiftaxe comprehended that unknown god!) he would not stay long.

  With the druid and Edwynna following cautiously, holding each other tightly, Swiftaxe led the way through the trees down towards the straits. He stopped suddenly, and waved them down, and Gryddan – no fool he – dropped into the darkness of the undergrowth, dragging the girl down with him.

  Swiftaxe edged forward and peered out of the trees at the muddy, rock-strewn shore, where the dark waters lapped quietly, as the tide gradually rose.

  Bedivyg crouched close to the water, his head hung on his chest, his body in agony as he strove for breath and calm. He held his sword, and the tip of the blade was already covered by water; where the waters lapped at the steel they were stained red, and the redness seemed to haunt the iron that had drawn it.

  As Swiftaxe burst through the trees, cloak flung back and axe drawn, so the Roman rose to his feet, and his face became a mask of hatred. He turned slowly to face the Berserker, his sword held out to one side, his hair dank and grimy and hanging lank about his face. His eyes narrowed, his lips parted, and he watched Swiftaxe run towards him without flinching.

  Swiftaxe stopped, a few paces from his brother, and closed the distance between them steadily and carefully. The water of the straits lapped about Bedivyg’s sandals; the wind blew cool, and distantly the animal cry of the beast god was drowned by the terrified screams of men being horribly slain.

  The Roman said, ‘You had better kill me, brother. I gave you your chance to escape and you have not taken it. Now I have little choice but to kill you.’

  Without thinking, letting brute force control him, Swiftaxe kicked the sword from Bedivyg’s hand and rammed his fist into his mouth, sending the legionary staggering backwards into the water. Before he could rise to his feet again Swiftaxe had followed him into the choppy straits and hit him twice about the skull, knocking him senseless. He dragged the body up the shore and laid it down by some trees, hoping that his own kind – Romans! – would stumble across him first.

  There was a raft a few hundred paces away and Swiftaxe beckoned to the druid to run. The old man and the girl emerged, terrified, from the trees, and the three of them darted, crouched low, towards the cumbersome craft.

  Across the straits from them, if they avoided being carried too far to the west, were dense trees and steep slopes, and there were unlikely to be many Roman patrols there.

  It was a slim chance for escape, and they grasped it willingly.

  CHAPTER 8

  At the end of the day, the area of hills and ridges looking down across the straits was in Roman hands; they had established their lines, and rested, now, ready to push against the re-grouped Britons at dawn of the following day. It had been a successful and highly satisfactory crossing, and though reports of some great beast walking and destroying two centuries of men were filtering into the Headquarters of Centurion Crassus Andronicus, he discarded such things as being the work of over-susceptible imaginations.

  One thing, and one thing only, concerned him. And as he reclined in a bucket chair, still uniformed and armoured, his head light with the influence of wine, he realised that this thing worried him far more than it was wise to admit.

  The Berserker! The Legion’s special weapon! The Briton who was a killing machine, equal to any thirty legionaries.

  And what worried Andronicus the most was that this Berserker had turned against his own army, the Roman army, and caused a great slaughter. The Centurion was not pleased, for it had been his own men who had suffered the most severely at Swiftaxe’s hand.

  Outside he heard a squad of men march quickly through the drumming rain that had recently swept in from the sea. They stopped outside, slushing in the mud, and he could hear the rattle of equipment that told of their chill. Andronicus’s Optione, a short and irritable looking man called Birassius, walked to the tent flap and opened it. Outside a bedraggled, but ruddy and healthy looking decurion straightened and saluted him.

  ‘The Berserker’s brother is here.’

  ‘Bring him in,’ said the Optione, and Andronicus swigged back the last of his wine, then reached for an apple.

  A bedraggled and miserable looking man was brought into the tent. His metal armour-plate was dulled with mud, and his blond hair was lank and bloody. His weapons had been taken from him. His eyes were wild as they stared at the Centurion, and Andronicus realised that here was a man who expected nothing less than death.

  And was afraid of the thought!

  A man in mortal fear of his life, the Centurion knew, was remarkably easy to manipulate.

  He straightened in his chair, waving the decurion from the tent. ‘I am told you assisted your brother to escape.’

  Bedivyg shook his head violently. ‘Not so,’ he said thickly. Andronicus noticed for the first time the blood on his lips, and the swelling of his flesh. He wondered who had hit him, his brother or the soldiers who believed him to be a traitor.

  ‘I am told that when the Berserker went wild you ran to the straits to escape.’ />
  ‘Not so,’ repeated Bedivyg, wincing with the effort of talking. ‘I recognised his invulnerability in the woods – he was hewing men down as if they were saplings. I hoped to entice him down to the water and duel with him there. He would have respected the custom of our tribe that the first into the water faces the land. Thus his back would have been exposed to our archers.’

  Andronicus was much impressed by that story; he didn’t believe a word of it, but admired the way it neatly bridged the gap between the two cultures to become startlingly plausible.

  ‘A nice story,’ he said, staring Bedivyg straight in the eye. The Briton frowned. ‘Had it worked it would have been one of the most commendable actions of this campaign. Since it failed we have only your word, the word of a man who has forsaken his tribe for the legions and culture of Rome. Are you, do you think, the sort of man whose word is easy to accept?’

  ‘I speak truthfully,’ said Bedivyg. ‘At first I was reluctant to censure my brother for his retention of the old ways. I freely admit that. But I am a Roman, and proud of it, and the Horned Warrior is no longer any brother of mine. This I swear by the sword of Mars. You must believe me.’

  ‘I want the Horned Warrior, this Berserker … I want him dead. He is too dangerous by far, and from what you told me earlier, legionary, he is a source of inspiration to this bitch queen, Boudicca.’ Andronicus gazed thoughtfully at the Briton. ‘There will be trouble from that woman, and I don’t want the Horned Warrior among the ranks of her rabble, and I imagine that General Paulinus feels the same.’

  Bedivyg stepped forward, his face a mask of desperation. ‘Centurion, give me the chance to bring his head to you. Let me live long enough to prove that I did not help him escape, let me prove it by slaughtering him with my own sword.’

  Andronicus pretended to think for a while, inwardly smirking at the stupidity of this Briton. If he had his way he would have kicked all natives out of the Legions; they were too unpredictable, too dangerous. It was a bad policy to recruit from the British tribes so early in the ocupation.