Berserker (Omnibus)

by Holdstock, Robert

  He removed his horned helmet from his head and placed it beside the Roman helmet, inserting one of the stubby horns into the gap between helm and cheek piece of the other to help the flimsy support of the branch.

  From the belt he drew the Roman sword which all those years ago he had won from the Roman who had made him betray Aithlenn and the other Hags. He put the point against his breast and gently carved through his skin, fashioning the symbols of rebirth that the girl in the Valley had taught him. He winced with pain, but stuck with the agonising task, moving the sword smoothly and firmly in the circular pattern; the shallow scratches bled and he washed his flesh in the cold water until at last the marks were raw but partly healed. Turning, he flung the blade up on to his side of the bank, then turned back to face his brother.

  Bedivyg rose to his feet and drove his own sword into the ground.

  He walked into the river, holding the dark flesh of his member and making a face as the cold waters bit at his most delicate parts; but as soon as he was accustomed to the iciness he swept the river past him with his hands while wading deeper into the stream.

  Waist deep he faced Swiftaxe, and the two brothers came into each other’s arms and stood there for long minutes, hugging and trying desperately to control the tears of grief and joy they would rather have shed.

  Without a word, without needing to say a word, they drew apart. Bedivyg’s eyes were red and tear-stained and he splashed river water into his face. Swiftaxe reached out his arm and Bedivyg took it, the grip of friendship.

  ‘I regret bitterly that it has come to this,’ said the Berserker.

  ‘I too,’ said Bedivyg, and frowned, staring down at the waters and shaking his head. ‘In an instant, in those stones, I became myself again. Why did I kill that druid? I don’t know …’ he was confused and upset. Swiftaxe squeezed the muscles of his arm, an affectionate if painful gesture.

  ‘You were bitter,’ he said. ‘The mask of the Roman had slipped away, and you were momentarily bitter.’

  ‘And cold,’ said his brother, nodding. ‘Like now. Bitterly cold. And yet now I am warm inside. Though I must kill you, I feel love for you Caylen. By Taran, by all the gods, I am glad that I can kill you as a Coritani, and not as a Roman.’

  ‘I too,’ said Swiftaxe. ‘It would have distressed me greatly to have fought a mask.’

  ‘You’d have fought me gladly enough in the arena if your bizarre fit had not died away.’

  They grinned at the memory of their time as gladiators.

  ‘We faced each other then,’ said Swiftaxe, ‘and knew that it was right to avoid contest. But even then, even in the days following our freedom, I wondered who would have won.’

  Bedivyg agreed. ‘I wondered that too. I felt instinctively that I would have killed you, but that was part of the training. I was always faster than you, brother. But you were always stronger. I was always more cunning, but you were always more relentlessly furious. We are well matched and it will be a long fight. It will be the hidden weaknesses that will determine this contest.’

  Swiftaxe said, ‘Perhaps the contest can be short and to your immediate liking.’

  The grip on his arm released as Bedivyg drew back. ‘What does that mean?’ He seemed angry, puzzled, confused. ‘What do you offer? A bargain? A token? Are you a Coritanian or are you a man without honour?’

  Cutting through his brother’s rising anger, Swiftaxe, feeling the cold of the river draining his strength, tried to explain. ‘I am a Briton, but I am a man cursed as you well know. Only you can help me Bedivyg, and that help I ask most earnestly.’

  ‘I shall help you to die, furiously and bloodily. Your death will be swift, my brother, and honourable. But if you talk of quitting, I shall kill you for the dog that you will have become in my eyes.’

  Swiftaxe backed away, feeling too cold, too despairing to think carefully or rationally. He said, ‘Bedivyg, I must carve a sign upon your body, and once that is done I shall open my breast to your sword for a killing blow to the heart. This is how it must be for my freedom, Bedivyg. Though I shall die here, I shall be reborn in a time when I may face my life in peace. If you love me, if you have even a fragment of compassion for me, grant me this way of death so I may at least ride the wild wind with my ancestors.’

  Bedivyg turned, furious, and ran from the river; water, running from his white and goosefleshed body, saturated the thick body hair on his legs and buttocks.

  He stood on the bank wiping the liquid from his skin and he shouted, ‘I shall kill you in the way of all Coritani. I have my own honour to think of, Caylen. I have to reinstate myself as a Briton, and I cannot tolerate any suggestion of an easy slaughter. You must fight with all your strength, and will, and determination … and then, when I kill you, I shall consume your genitals and take your strength, and your spirit, with me … I shall take them back to the valley of our home.’

  He walked back to stand with his feet in the river and looked imploringly at his brother. ‘Caylen, please! You must understand that I need your death to find my own honour. You are a man of total honour, and your death will not in the slightest diminish that.’ He seemed almost in tears, his face slack and boyish, his eyes full of an earnest imploration to his brother to acknowledge his dilemma. ‘Never have you betrayed your people … our people … always you fought for their honour. I … I failed. I was weak. I took the easy way. Perhaps it was your druid friend that made this known to me as he saved your own life. Perhaps he worked a spell. I don’t know, but I do know that I must rid myself of the marks of my weakness. Caylen, help me find honour, by fighting with vengeance, so that whether I live or die, I shall be a Briton again, in spirit as well as birthright.’

  Swiftaxe felt an enormous knot of tension build up in his belly. He stared at the surging river, was conscious of the rain storm moving in from the west, and of the turmoil of a man who stood upon the bank before him. He reached into the waters and cupped a double handful of the clear river, splashed his face and soaked his hair, sweeping the strands of his hair back so that they hung away from his face, lank and heavy, unmoved by the biting winds.

  ‘Honour or freedom,’ he said. ‘The choice before us.’

  ‘What freedom does either of us wish?’ said Bedivyg.

  ‘Don’t you know? Are you unaware of the full nature of the curse upon me?’

  ‘Your curse you can fight to break another day! My honour needs immediate action.’ Bedivyg was angry, perhaps because he sensed the enormous selfishness in his actions and thinking, but could not face the thought of any other solution.

  Swiftaxe turned from him and waded from the river, brushing the water from his body and reaching for his sword. He turned, then, so they faced each other, just the wide river separating them, the clothing and the wood, the symbols of their different lives, their different outlooks, blowing and swaying on the branch between them.

  Perhaps this was the way of things with man, thought Swiftaxe bitterly, feeling strangely calm, strangely cynical. Perhaps it was the pivot of a man’s life that he must decide between honour and freedom, and not just as a duel between him and his brother, but as a duel within himself, a terrible and frightening fight to the death within his own mind.

  Perhaps I am lucky to have the physical fight to alleviate the inner pain, he thought.

  And as he grasped his sword tight and walked into the water, he knew that he would do it Bedivyg’s way, he knew that he could not die without allowing Bedivyg that achievement of honour, that trivial – so trivial, wasn’t it? – achievement that was so central, and so important, to the brother of his blood.

  But how, he wondered, could he control the manifestation of Odin, the bear, the berserk form of his existence that could so easily destroy his brother, and not just by killing him!

  Swiftaxe touched the short iron blade of the sword he held, and lowered his gaze to stare at the terrible, complex markings he had made there, in the hours before he had left the Valley.

  Such strang
e marks, gleaming bright, new metal exposed in the dulled surface of the iron. Names written in bizarre letters, spirals and crosses, symbols of the world past and the world to come, intertwined and linked by almost inconceivably complex patterns. It had taken so long to make this blade ready to capture the spirit of the god, but he knew that if he failed to mark his brother’s body in the correct way, then even if Odin left him and fled into the blade, he would not be trapped by the spell in the iron, but would pass on into Bedivyg, and that was something Swiftaxe could hardly bear to think about.

  His was a curse that he would not have wished upon any man.

  Bedivyg stepped into the river, his blade held out before him, his face grim and determined. Swiftaxe touched the scar-markings upon his body and went to meet him.

  The storm broke to the west and a fine rain began to drench the river, and the Britons who began to fight there. After a while a mournful downpour drowned the ringing sounds of their combat, sweeping the downs and the forests with a veil of depression that made even the wild animals of these free lands dart for cover.

  So short, so quick, the death of a man in a river combat.

  As their iron clashed, and the blood streamed from them, washed away by rain and swirled towards the sea by the tumbling waters of the river, so their fury grew.

  Swiftaxe’s fury was the anger of the Berserker, the manic force of strength and dedication to slaughter that he had hoped to control. But how could he? The bear knew well that – if it was to survive in Swiftaxe – this was one fight that its human host had to win, and had to win quickly, before he could make the marks upon his brother’s body.

  It had bided its time carefully, but when the blood flowed from the first gouging wound in Bedivyg’s shoulder, the ghost of the god stormed forward and took control.

  Swiftaxe began to scream, and his iron blade sang and smashed at his brother, who backed off, yelling and defending himself for his life. His cries were the cries of a man who senses honour returning, and though he sensed death looming above him in the shape of the Scald Crow, he was satisfied to think that he had destroyed the stigma of his weakness.

  And so Bedivyg, against the thrashing, mindless form of the Berserker, fought as a man who knows that whether he lives or dies he has won the battle.

  For Caylen Swiftaxe, the young Coritanian, there was only terror, the terror of being trapped behind the mask of the bear that would so quickly, so easily, strike the life from his brother unless somehow it was prevented. But the human was so helpless, so much at the mercy of the enormous strength of the berserk form of the god, Odin. He could only watch as the redness flew, and the cold waters ate deeper into the strength and resolve of the mortal who fought for honour, and for life, and for the pleasure of once again fighting as a Briton.

  And that Briton had to survive, long enough for Swiftaxe to perpetrate a bloody deed of freedom upon his body …

  Swiftaxe, desperate, summoned all his strength. He reached forward to the claws of the Berserker and grasped them, made the blade ease its pressure of blows. Bedivyg sensed only a sudden weakening and struck back, hard and swift: his blade found its mark, opening Swiftaxe’s belly and making the Berserker scream with pain. Swiftaxe backed away, holding the rend in his flesh and assessing the strength that he had lost.

  His brother surged forward, stumbling in the bloody waters, but triumphant now, knowing that victory would be his.

  ‘The heart!’ screamed Caylen Swiftaxe, and in the same instant the bear raised its sword and struck hard at Bedivyg, who parried the blow but slipped, taken off guard.

  He watched Swiftaxe’s sword as it swept down towards him, knowing instinctively that it would take his life; then the blade hesitated and twisted in the Berserker’s hand, contorted into the mask of some wild animal, seemed neither beast nor human as it stared, snarling, at the struggling form of Bedivyg.

  Bedivyg laughed humourlessly, and struggled to find his balance, crying, ‘I have you now!’

  But the point of Swiftaxe’s blade suddenly drove into his breast, excruciatingly painful, and so quick, so shocking that Bedivyg was paralysed for a moment, waiting for death; then instinctively he struggled to escape the blade.

  It was his turn to hesitate, however, sensing that something was wrong.

  The sword was not being pushed into his body, but was carving through his cold-numbed skin, drawing thin lines of blood, but not cutting to the soul of him.

  It was done in an instant … the eye-symbol of Odin, surrounded by the five-sided figure that would block the entry of the spirit … the lines oozed bloodily upon Bedivyg’s chest as the rain and river washed the wounds clean.

  Bedivyg had hardly known what was happening, and it had been finished before he could pull away. He clutched the shallow gashes and cried out angrily, and when he struck …

  His blade bit into Swiftaxe’s neck, knocking the Berserker into the water. The bear roared and thrust upwards, against the wishes of the human that now sank backwards in exhaustion, into the Berserker’s mind. The blade in Swiftaxe’s hand connected with the ridged belly of his brother as that triumphant Briton closed in for the kill …

  Caylen managed to scream: ‘Oh Gods, no! Bedivyg, strike me … strike me!’

  Bedivyg, slowly sinking, struggled up again, his eyes half-closed with agony, the hilt of Swiftaxe’s sword stuck firm and deep in his body. Tears joined the rain and blood that swept his body.

  Swiftaxe staggered to his feet, conscious that the bear had receded from him in that instant of the blow … but had it slipped enough, had it gone completely?

  He clutched the spouting wound at the side of his neck, and reached towards Bedivyg, his eyes narrowed, his mind feeling freer and more alone than he could remember.

  ‘Your blade …’ he gasped, and Bedivyg, though he was failing fast, found the strength to lift his sword, and point it towards the brother he loved.

  Swiftaxe cried for joy and fell forwards, on to the extended blade, taking the blade deep into his heart, knowing death, knowing the fullest triumph of release as he felt the metal eat through the pulsing flesh of his body, and his soul, and his curse.

  ‘I am released!’ cried the Berserker, and in the instant of his cry came the scream of a bear, and that terrible sound came neither from Swiftaxe nor from Bedivyg, but from something that surrounded the two dying men and encompassed them in its animal aura, and reached for them, struggling to enter them from its iron prison.

  Soon, for Swiftaxe, there was just the swirling darkness of the vortex, the void before birth, and the sense of movement and of anticipation, and an existence beyond pain, and beyond tears, a place where sound was unnecessary until, at length, he cried out again …

  The cry of a man reborn …

  The cry of life begun anew.

  Bedivyg crawled from the river and crouched on the muddy bank, watching as his brother’s body was swept away into the darkness. He could not pull the rune-engraved sword from his body, but would not have wanted to; he rested his hand on the hilt, and the touch was tender. He crouched there for hours, in the rain and the wind, and even when the branch in the river toppled and was swept away by the current, consumed by the earth, he still sat there, watching everything and nothing.

  By morning, he too, was gone.

  CODA

  The stranger appeared out of the dawn mists, moving swiftly through the knee-deep heather on the valley slopes, letting his hands brush the dew-saturated fronds and wiping the moisture across his heavily bearded face. His eyes stared straight ahead and he came fast, not running, but walking so rapidly that it seemed, to those who watched, that at any moment he would break into a frantic race to get to the walls around the settlement.

  The alarm call went out and men grabbed shields and spears and ran to the steps to peer across the palisade.

  The stranger came closer, and soon his breathing was loud and strained, an unnerving sound in this dawn stillness. He was totally naked, his blond hair as long as his sh
oulders, his beard ragged and unkempt, tangled and flecked with vegetation. Scars, the awful marks of sword and spear, covered his body from neck to groin. But muscle and sinew rippled as he moved and it was apparent to all who regarded him that he was a strong man, with a strong mission.

  ‘What land is this?’ called the naked man as he arrived, breathless, at the very base of the wooden walls and stood, staring up at the faces that peered down at him.

  ‘No land that has a name,’ said the Warlord, a dark-skinned man, darkly bearded and well armoured in leather and metal strips.

  ‘What time is this?’ cried the naked man.

  ‘The morning of a new day,’ said the Warlord. ‘No other time is of importance.’

  ‘Where am I?’ cried the naked man, desperation touching his voice.

  ‘You are where you stand, beneath the sky and above the earth.’

  ‘But what people are you?’

  The Warlord laughed. ‘We are the sons of our fathers.’

  The stranger raised his arms, his fists clenched. ‘Am I a free man?’ A sudden wind caught his lank hair and blew it wild. His colourless eyes, filled with anxiety, stared from the darkness of his tanned features.

  ‘No man is free,’ said the Warlord. ‘Here, catch this …’

  He tossed a leather pouch of food to the naked man who caught it and opened it; he ate greedily, stuffing food into his mouth, until the pouch was empty; this he cast to the ground. He wiped a broad hand across his mouth and looked up at the gathered warriors again.

  ‘Where do I go now?’ he asked.

  ‘Where the trackway takes you,’ laughed the men on the walls, and turned from him.

  The naked man fled from the settlement and ran through the tall stands of purple heather, vanishing into the dawn mists as they slowly dispersed. His cry, as he was consumed, was neither a cry of despair nor a cry of hope; it was not a cry of joy or a cry of anger; it was not the cry of a man or the cry of a bear, but something that was a part of all these things.