Berserker (Omnibus)

by Holdstock, Robert

  For a while, though, the wind and the waving, scrubby grasses were witnesses to a massacre whose like would not be known in these western lands until a great king called Brian was convinced by the sword to give up his impassioned hold on the throne of the land called Ireland.

  For two hours the shield-wall of the Norsemen held strong and unbroken, each fallen man being replaced by a warrior from the second line. Though the triangle of men shrank steadily and inexorably, the Celts with their violent, sword-flashing tactic were inferior to the more professional soldiers who defended themselves for their very lives.

  Outside the defensive triangle the seven Berserks were microcosms of fury, whirling through the enemy, cleaving great paths through the numbers of naked and breech clad men.

  Harald, too, fought mindlessly and without comprehension. He was seen by the tightly knotted Norsemen as just one more blood-stained bear-shape, running amok, sword dulled with red and green slime. Where he ran heads rolled, and eventually the Berserks found themselves chasing after prey, for the Celts were wise enough to recognise supernatural forces at large.

  As long as the Berserks ran free, slaughtering and crying, and as long as the witch who led the enemy kept her magic powers quiet, the Vikings defended with valour and determination. In their midst Hadric watched the gradual decimation of the Celts and realised that soon the numbers would be matched and a new tactic could be tried.

  But all the time the triangle of shields was forced steadily back towards the sea, for the piles of dead and mutilated made combat impossible on the upper part of the beach. And the tide came in, slowly, inch by inch, while the Celts still seemed to appear across the ridge like flies on a fresh carcass. And of flies there were plenty too, fat, black flies that settled on the sweaty, bloody brows of the Vikings as if they sensed that soon they could feed on the very flesh as it liquefied and drained into the sand.

  Deirdre was much in evidence, streaking around the formation of the Vikings, engaging individuals in close battle and trying to lead the way into the inner group of men; but though her sword slit guts and throats, she – like her warriors – found the Viking tactic too strong, the wall of shields impenetrable.

  At last she faced a Berserker, the young one, Harald.

  For a moment bear and woman stared at each other and the whole vigour of the battle seemed to subside a fraction, the cries and screams fading so that the irritated screech of circling sea gulls added their own cacophony to the beach massacre. Breathing heavily, her full, red-tipped breasts rising and shaking as they fell, her legs apart and the red brush between her thighs moist with sweat, as if she anticipated some potent lover to lie upon her in the heat of the battle, she lifted her sword and touched the bear skin that covered Harald’s chest. The Berserker, calm for just an instant, grinned and reached up to take the blade in his hand, bending it with that supernatural strength that he and his kind could muster during their periods of fury.

  Then he raised his own sword and would have struck the woman’s head from her shoulders, but something in her eyes stopped him, and he backed away. With just bloody sand between them they stared at each other, and there was a mutual understanding that no other on the field of slaughter comprehended.

  Beartooth saw the hesitation on Harald’s part, and assumed that the young Berserker was in trouble. He hacked a head and an arm from the two Celts who fought him, and kicked a third so fiercely in the groin that the man died of shock where he stood, his manhood crushed and bleeding as it hung there.

  Beartooth raced to Harald’s side and struck violently at Deirdre, while around them the killing continued and the Norsemen were forced further towards the shifting waves of the bay.

  As Beartooth’s sword swept towards the sorceress, so it turned to ice, and the ice to water which vaporised in the heat of the sun. The empty hilt swept through the air and he drew back, staring in amazement at the empty space where the metal blade had once been.

  Beartooth screeched and backed away, crying, ‘The slut serves a greater god than Odin!’

  Deirdre laughed as if she had understood the words, and shouted something in her own language. The words seemed to penetrate the great sound of dying, and every Celt around her fought with renewed and redoubled strength, laughing for his own part at the incomprehensible joke.

  Deirdre, still watching Harald, wiped her sword blade across her flat belly, smearing blood over her navel. When she held the blade up it was straightened again.

  She smiled at the youth, and winked, then turned and ran to where the wall of the Norsemen was beginning to break in chaos, and the Vikings were being picked off one by one. Her smooth, plump buttocks wiggled almost provocatively, as if she were inviting Harald to follow, and as his eyes fixed upon her body she looked back, shaking her red hair away from her face.

  Someone struck Harald from behind, and, turning, he found himself facing a young Celt who had delivered an enormous blow to his neck, but failed to penetrate the collar of mail. The boy screamed as he realised he was lost, and then his scream was strangled as his head was cut off, rolling across the ground and staring open-eyed at the blue sky.

  The Norsemen were lost. Within minutes the battle was finished. The triangular formation broke and the Vikings scattered, fighting desperately to the last. But pressure of numbers and the growing fear that they faced a supernatural force led them to retreat. Soon they ran into the sea, and the Celts’ war cry turned into a cry of triumph.

  The fighting continued, the wind carrying the odour of death high into the hills. Yellow hair blew along the sandy beach like so much corn reaped before a storm. In the water the clash of metal continued, and the waves rolled scarlet up the shore, carrying limbs and hair, rolling the helms and heads of Norsemen up to the tide line. Still the screams of battle continued, and the splash and pursuit of the last of the invaders continued until the battle had spread so thinly along the water line that the shrill cries of the gulls and the mournful wash of the sea was the main sound. Only the occasional thud and clash of metal, and a distant shout and piercing death cry, told of the hunting and slaying of the last of the Vikings.

  The sun set slowly; an evening wind rustled the grasses.

  Hadric was among the last to be cut down. Attacked on all sides, he made good work of the two Celts who faced him, but he fell when a recurved javelin pushed into his belly from behind and hooked out his stomach and heart so that he fell dead in an instant. His head was hewn from the ridged sinews of his neck and hoisted on the same spear that had killed him. A group of naked Celts ran along the beach holding their trophy high while their own kind cheered as it passed.

  Deirdre swam into the bay in pursuit of one of the last of the Vikings to survive. The two warriors grappled and fought in the swell, their grunts and sweat washing up against the shore along with the gruesome remains of the Norse army. Woman and raider submerged.

  After a long while Deirdre broke surface and waved her short and stumpy trophy in her hand, striking out strongly for the shore, cutting through the blood-stained waters, oblivious of the foul taste and the greasy feel it left upon her.

  A head broke the water ahead of her and she twisted into an upright position, treading water and bringing up her sword from where it hung between her legs, protected in its leather sheath. After a second she recognised the young Berserker.

  ‘Help me!’ gasped the youth, his voice sending a spray of salt water from lips heavily masked by his saturated moustache.

  ‘Help yourself, Viking,’ she replied in oddly accented Norse, otherwise speaking his language perfectly. She struck at him with the flat of her blade.

  ‘You have the gods to answer your whim!’ shrieked the Berserker, dodging the blow, not reacting as the blade splashed the water an inch away from his neck.

  Celtish warriors leapt into the water as they saw the distant confrontation; Harald heard them and began to panic more. ‘Help me release myself from this spell! Help me break the hold of Odin!’

  She
said, ‘A spell binds us all, Berserker! There is not one of us who isn’t controlled by greater forces. Fight or die, now, since you have chosen to confront me directly!’

  He vanished below the water’s surface and she dived too, staring through the red-tinted gloom as he came towards her.

  His hand gripped her thigh and she stabbed at him with her sword, but she found the blade wrenched from her hand. An instant later he was close to her and holding her body to his, locked so tightly at the groin that she felt herself excited despite the chill.

  They surfaced, gasping for breath. ‘Help me. For Innocence’s sake, witch, help me!’

  ‘Follow me, then,’ she said softly, and pushed him away violently, striking out towards the shore.

  Harald trod water for a moment, floating despite his heavy mail tunic. He watched her saturated red hair trailing behind her.

  The three Celtish sword-sluts, knives held between teeth, struck towards him, the glow of war manifest brightly in their eyes. Suddenly, though, they stopped and screamed. As they writhed in the water something dragged them down, deep below the surface, holding them there until their breath broke in turbulent bubbles across the heaving waves. Deirdre turned in the water and smiled at Harald, before swimming on towards the shore.

  She ran up the beach, among the sprawled bodies of Celts and Norsemen, water running from her tanned, plump flesh.

  Harald swam ashore, dragged himself up the beach and lay, for a while, recovering his strength. Towards the final light of dusk the Celts returned to carry away their dead and loot the corpses of the Vikings.

  Harald slipped into the shadows of a birch grove some way inland, and lay watching the final violating of his brother Norse. He was vaguely aware that he had not seen Beartooth or the others struck down during the battle.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The bear slept, and as Harald Swiftaxe hid in the grove of trees staring up at the bright summer stars, he found himself in full control of his faculties for the first time since he had left Urlsgarde as a prisoner of Odin.

  He was cold, his waterlogged clothing freezing his body, but he found the chill did not bother him, for the ecstasy of repossession drowned all sensation but the sensation of memory.

  What he had done as a Berserker was still with him, and yet it was not he who had wielded the swords and run amok with Beartooth and the others. What he had done appalled him, and at times, as he lay in the night, he found himself consciously nauseated by a particular piece of brutality that he suddenly remembered.

  Between the rages, of course, there had been the long periods of calm. He remembered these too, and the growing sensation of hunger, spread across days or even weeks, prior to the Berserker rage that could take him so unexpected, so uncontrollably.

  It was like a hideous illness, some malaise contracted from one of the hotter lands, further south than he had ever ventured but to which many of the warrior farmers of Urlsgarde had travelled, bringing back stories and strange ailments that might lie quiet for weeks and then re-emerge to possess the man with fever and a rash across his whole body.

  An illness, but an illness of the soul. A great, clawed spirit resting in the dark places of his body and mind, suddenly emerging to take control and lead the youth in such a spree of slaughter that even the wind sometimes seemed to divide before him, unwilling to risk itself before his flashing blade. Then the quiet, the aimless roaming across a country, through towns where the people scattered before him, locked themselves away and exhorted their fylgjur, the guardian spirits of their houses, to protect them while the shadow of the bear was cast across their community.

  He was in such a period of calm now, and Beartooth and the others, if they had survived the battle, they too might be calm, looking for him, perhaps, walking inland and searching for their young recruit. They would not let him escape. They had a revenge to exact upon him!

  So now that he was free, even if just for a few days, he wanted to remain free, and Beartooth was the last person he hoped to find.

  The sorceress Deirdre was his great hope now. Perhaps she could help him, perhaps she had a spell at her command that could disperse possessing spirits, cast them out of him and leave him as he had once been. When they had fought, when they had touched, there had been a deeper recognition, something that made killing each other wrong; he had felt it and he knew that she had felt it, and yet it puzzled him. She spoke his language and that puzzled him too, for the languages of the Norsemen and the Celt are as dissimilar as earth and sky.

  There was something about her, something entrancing, something – inviting.

  He felt, deeply in his mind, that whilst she might help him, in some as yet incomprehensible way he could help her!

  He had to find her!

  At dawn he stripped off his soaking wet clothes and pulled on the bloody robes of a Viking who had escaped the barbarism of the Celtish looters. His ragged hair and beard still gave him a violent and wild look but he felt less conspicuous, even if his clothing would earn him an arrow between the eyes before any Celt stopped to speak.

  He ran and walked inland, hugging the rocks and trees, listening always for the sound of voices to give a clue as to where the army had gone after its victory.

  He passed villages, small clusters of round wooden huts with low, stone walls built into their bases, and tiny dog corrals clustered just inside low, unsteady-looking palisades. The dogs barked noisily as he crept along ridges above them, or through glades near by. More than once a heavy-looking farmer emerged and scanned the woodlands, looking for the disturbance, but Harald remained undetected. By midday he had come a long way inland, still quite close to the winding river along which the defeated Norse raiders should have sailed yesterday to join the ill-fated expedition in the north.

  He passed the night in the woods, nervously waiting for dawn. The noise of the forest was frightening and alien; there were animals here that he had never experienced at home, and they crashed through the undergrowth, sniffing and growling deep in their throats. Harald felt sure that the blood on his clothing must attract their attention, but they went past and he survived.

  It was during the night that again, for the first time in many months, he heard the howling of wolves.

  Reacting with all the instincts of both animal and man, he twisted round on to his belly and lay flat, eyes wide in the darkness, staring through the trees, listening above the rustling and screeching of night life for the terrifying cry of the beast he feared both as man and bear. The bear twisted restlessly, reared up darkly and tried to come forward, to see for itself through the blue eyes of the young warrior. But Harald fought it back and, because it was not its time, because Odin was elsewhere amusing himself, the bear curled back into its corner. Just the human lay there, breathing quietly, dreading the sudden padding of wolves, staring and searching for the coal-fire eyes.

  He remembered the journey with Sigurd Gotthelm, and the great wolf that had haunted him in his dreams. Again he sensed it prowling through the sky somewhere near, looking down from its strange land, its jowls heavy with saliva, its tongue lolling as it focused on the Berserker warrior and looked for a low point in the bank of cloud from which to jump to the earth below.

  The image, which existed only in his mind, faded away, yet Harald was aware that the great wolf was still near, close behind, not yet ready to spring, but leaving him in no doubt as to its presence.

  And Harald was terribly afraid.

  The wolf pack, the mortal beasts that scattered before the night winds, ran along the edge of the wood, passed on into the darkness.

  Towards the end of the next day he came to the retreating Celts, in camps spread out along the river shore whilst they regained their strength and dressed their wounds. Small leather tents told Harald of the sleeping quarters of the leaders, but he saw no sign of Deirdre among the milling warriors, heard no woman’s voice among the male laughter and the shrill sound of metal being sharpened or beaten back into shape.

  The
roasting carcasses of pigs and a large deer made Harald’s mouth water, but he repressed the agony of starvation and watched only for the strange woman.

  Night fell and guards walked out on all sides, one coming quite close to where Harald lay in the undergrowth. The man, dressed in a thick woollen shirt and breeks, carried only a long spear and, with this held between his knees, he sat at the base of a yew tree and let his gaze wander out across the river valley.

  Below them, along the silver river, the fires burned low and glowed an inviting red. Around them the hills were stark against the starry night, and in the direction that Harald was headed a high mound capped the knoll. A strange blue radiance outlined the earthen structure and seemed to cast its shadow across the silent camp, although no shadow could be seen in the night.

  When the guard was relaxed, Harald crept up behind him and pressed his sword against the man’s throat, holding it tight so the blunted edge nevertheless drew blood. The warrior’s spear fell to the earth as he relaxed his grip upon it, sensing his doom close at hand.

  ‘Where’s Deirdre?’ demanded Harald, and the man gasped and murmured something in his own language.

  ‘Deirdre!’ snapped Harald, and repeated the name over and over until at last the man cried quietly in his throat and lifted an arm, pointing to the dull, blue glow on the western horizon.

  Harald drew the blue blade quickly in sawing fashion across the man’s gullet and dragged the corpse out of sight of the camp. Then he stripped off the clothes and pulled them over his own, finding both sets of garments warmer than he had been used to and welcoming the sensation.

  Skirting the sprawling camp, regretting that none of the fires and their cooking remnants were close enough for him to sneak in and steal a morsel of food, he climbed the hill towards the strange blue glow.

  The glow was gone when he reached the top of the mound and he risked standing upright for a moment to stare into the grey night about him.