by Paul Finch
“Ljot … I’m here!” came the Norn-like voice.
Ljot glanced up. It was cold enough for a man’s breath to weave a fog, yet there was sweat on his brow, beads of it soaking the woolen hood beneath his helm.
“Theora!” He stood again. “Where are you?”
“Ljot …”
He went forward, the ice groaning under his weight. Strong as the floe might be, the farther he ventured, the more the ocean undertows would be working on its joints and fissures, striving to break it into slabs, any one of which could topple over. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have dared go this far, but Theora needed him.
And now, at last, he saw her.
She was twenty yards ahead: back turned, head hung low as she wept.
Ljot hastened towards her. “Theora!”
She wore the grey cloak of Niflheim; it covered her slight form completely and was drawn up over her head in a pointed cowl. Such was the garb of that dread place – a stark contrast to the gold bangles and glinting elf-mail of Valhalla.
“Theora,” he said. “Don’t fear me. I can help. I’ll take you to a holy man …”
She turned to face him.
The shock that passed through Ljot almost killed him.
It was not Theora, nor had it ever been.
She – it – ripped back its hood with withered claws, and gazed upon him with luminous eyes fixed at different levels in a face divided into two halves: one side the sickly green-black of corrupted flesh; the other a livid, cadaverous white, which though undecayed, gave the spectral glimmer of the corpse-candle.
Ljot, who had faced down wolves and bears, who had never shied from combat, gave a choked, horrified shriek – before the aberration launched itself upon him.
Its hands clamped his neck like an eagle’s talons. Its strength was a giant’s. The pressure on his throat was immediately unbearable; the neck-bones bent as though ready to snap. His head still swam with horror, and only after dazed moments did he find the energy to fight back. He slammed fists into his assailant’s body. He hooked his fingers and tore at its tangled seaweed hair and blazing eyes. And yet he struck nothing, his fists made contact with empty air.
Ljot’s vision rapidly dimmed; saliva gurgled in his throat. He drew the dagger from his belt, thrusting and slashing with it. Again nothing: no shredding of flesh, no slicing of muscle. The thing bore him down to his knees and then onto his back. The heart was now tripping in his agonised chest; blood thundered in his ears.
But before death came, something else began to tug at him, to shout, to scream, to haul him sideways across the burning ice, and he wondered which unholy demon this could be. Or could it be a demoness?, for when he glanced through his scalding tears he saw heaving breasts under loose wraps of fox-fur, saw emerald eyes and a red-lipped mouth open with wild alarm. He flailed at her, this she-thing, for she fought him furiously, tearing at his arms as though to yank them from their sockets. Ljot would have cursed her, would have stabbed at her as well, if the main assailant hadn’t still weighed down on him, its foetid breath spilling through the blades of its teeth, its divided face like some devil-mask, some iron image of wrath beaten on the anvils of Jotunheim …
9
Radnar heard the commotion even from the high fells. In the crisp, clear air, the cries of a furious encounter came echoing up from the fjord.
Initially it sounded as though a woman was shrieking, but then he heard a man as well, shouting and roaring. Swiftly, Radnar fought his way through the milling sheep and hurried down the steep, snowy track. It was ten minutes of a journey, and just as he reached the farm-stead, his uncle and members of his drengir were spilling through the palisade gate, flaming torches in hand.
“What the devil is it?” Sigfurth growled.
“Ljot!” Radnar replied, dashing down the path towards the shore.
He reached the water-line just in time to see a girlish figure draped in red fox-skins, bent double as she backed across the ice towards him. She was dragging something heavy. He didn’t need to look twice to see that it was Ljot – still clad in fur and fleece, still armoured, the sword in his scabbard, the axe strapped to his back, yet utterly insensible. His head lolled, and his exposed neck was a torn, blackened ruin.
Radnar raced forward to help. As he did, he heard a groan from his brother, and saw clouded breath emerge. Radnar tried not to let his relief show.
“What happened?” he demanded of Marta. “It looks as though he’s been throttled!”
“I thought I saw something,” she panted. “In the mist.”
Radnar drew his sword. “Which way did it go?”
“Radnar …” Ljot stammered. He was only half-conscious, but now drawing wheezing gasps of air. “Radnar … we’re doomed.”
“Rest easy, brother. You’ve survived. And you’re the first one who has.”
“Radnar, we’re doomed …”
And now their uncle and his drengir came down through the boat-sheds.
“Radnar!” Sigfurth bellowed. “What about my wretched sheep?”
“Your wretched sheep are up on your wretched fell!” Radnar retorted. “Damn the bloody sheep, man! It’s your people it wants!”
Sigfurth noticed Ljot lying in the snow. “What happened here?”
“It attacked Ljot … what does it look like?”
“What attacked him?”
“I don’t know, but it couldn’t have been your blasted Skraeling, else he’d have left a dozen of them dead.”
Sigfurth’s carls surged forward, but there was a dull, nervy silence among them; wasn’t this injured fellow the one who’d so easily dropped one of their best fighters?
Sigfurth wheeled around. “Bring him back to the long-hall.”
“Wait!” Radnar shouted, stopping them. He pointed out over the ice. “We must find this thing and kill it!”
“First we talk,” Sigfurth said.
“Talk?”
“Radnar!” There was anger in Sigfurth’s voice, but also desperation. “From what we’ve seen, this thing can’t even be captured, let alone killed. Perhaps we’re better off fleeing from it?”
“You want to leave Bjarkalstead, uncle? After everything you’ve built here?”
“Halls can be reconstructed elsewhere. New land can be farmed. But people …” Sigfurth shook his hoary head, “people can’t be replaced so easily. And I’ve lost too many in my life as it is. But first, as I say, we talk.” He turned to his men and pointed at Ljot. “Bring him.”
They hoisted the fallen warrior onto their shoulders and set off after their master. Soon only Radnar and Marta remained.
“My lord,” the girl said. “I …”
“You frightened this thing off? You? A thrall, and a lass to boot?”
“No, I …”
“You’ve got courage,” Radnar said, striding after the others. “More than half of these whelps, I’ll wager.”
10
Sigfurth opted to call a Thing, a full council of his host, but he gave orders first that Ljot was to be placed in the bathhouse, where his brother could nurse him.
The bathhouse was a small, thatch-roofed outbuilding. It was rarely employed during Morketiden because all the stocked firewood was needed for use in the kitchen and the main hall, though a cauldron was warmed up there every week, so that pots and utensils might be cleaned.
Radnar scattered some straw, and laid his brother beside the huge iron pot, simmering on its bed of hot coals. He stripped Ljot of his weapons and ring-mail, and examined the wounds on his neck. They were clearly the work of murderous fingers. Much flesh had been gouged away, laying bare the moist sinew beneath. Ljot was still in a delirious state, breathing raggedly. Radnar could only marvel that he’d survived the attack. He dipped a rag into the cauldron.
“RADNAR!” Ljot suddenly shouted, his eyes flirting open.
“Easy,” Radnar said. “Rest easy … you’re alive, but it was close.”
Ljot’s face was bathed in sweat. “No … by t
he blood of Christ, no!” His voice was hoarse and broken.
“Rest. Sigfurth has called a Thing. I intend to go over there and say my piece. But first I …”
Ljot seized his brother’s wrist, his eyes bright with fear. “Radnar, we’ve made a terrible mistake!”
“What mistake? What are you talking about?”
“The creature … I recognised it.”
“And?”
Ljot’s brow knotted. “Dear Lord … it was the night-hag, Hel.”
Radnar caught his breath. “Hel? Loki’s daughter?”
“I saw her plain as day. The two-sided features … just as the skalds describe …”
Radnar shook his head. “Lad, you’re raving. You’re feverish …”
“Radnar, look at these marks!”
“But Hel is …”
“Real!” Froth flecked Ljot’s blue-grey lips. “Now I know it. And I know what it means.” His eyes widened even further, blood-red orbs rolling in ashen sockets. “We’ve betrayed them … our people, our beliefs.”
“Cowshit! You dreamed it while you were unconscious …”
Ljot gripped his brother’s collar. “Radnar, what have I done? What have I cost us?”
“You imagined it.”
“Did I imagine this?” Ljot indicated his throat.
Radnar pushed the clawed hands away and stood up. “If what you say is true, Odin would have struck us down.”
“Odin is striking us now.”
“I won’t accept it.”
“You won’t accept it?” Ljot gave a shrill braying sound, which Radnar realised with shock was laughter. “You won’t accept it? I’ve seen you make the Sign of the Hammer, Radnar … you brag about hedging your bets …”
“Ljot, you can’t give up your new faith so easily.”
Ljot laughed again. “Easily? It took an arch-demon of the Fimbulvetr to do it!”
Radnar tried to reason it out. “You’re saying this is Hel … that Hel is killing our uncle’s hearth-men? Why? Why should she? They never gave up their worship. And they were dying by this evil hand long before we arrived here …”
“Radnar, I saw her!”
“You didn’t see her! I won’t accept it, d’you hear! I won’t.”
Unable to bear the implications, Radnar stumbled out into the snow and the darkness.
“And you are right not to accept it, Lord Radnar. You are right.”
Radnar whirled around, and found Marta standing against the outhouse wall, huddled in her red fox-furs, but staring at him with rabbit-like fear.
“You again. What are you saying to me now?”
“I went onto the ice after your brother, because I heard his cries.”
“So?”
“When I found him he was in the throes of strangulation.”
“Obviously.”
Marta shook her head, perplexed. “The hands on his throat did not belong to Hel, or any other such fiend.” She ran her tongue over dry, cracked lips. “Lord Radnar … they were his own.”
“His own? His own hands! You lying bitch!”
“I’m not, I swear.” She fell tearfully to her knees, hands clasped. “He was strangling himself. I fought with every ounce of strength to prevent it. But I only succeeded because he’d virtually crushed out his own life. He slipped into unconsciousness before death could claim him.”
“You told me you saw something in the mist!”
She shook her head, confused. “Some phantasm, a faint shape … not nearly so clear to me as to your brother. But as soon as I arrived, it broke up, became part of the fog. Your brother … he didn’t see this because he was still trying to kill himself. He freed one hand to draw his dagger, but he continued throttling himself with the other hand. He was unstoppable, like a madman.”
Radnar was shaken to his bones. If what she said was true …
But it couldn’t be. Ljot committing suicide? … inconceivable! On the other hand, Radnar thought again about Ubbi Anlafsson, and how it would have taken an army to bind and burn him – when no such army was present. He thought about the girl, Theora, whose eyeballs had been ripped from her head – and yet whose own hands had been clutching those eyeballs when she was discovered.
Shouts rang from the long-hall as the Thing got under way. The building was ablaze with light and, by the outcries, every man in the drengir was venting his spleen.
Radnar listened to it, then turned and stamped towards the open gate.
“Lord Radnar!” the girl called after him.
“Stay with Ljot,” he said. “Tend him.”
“Where are you going?”
“To collect my uncle’s sheep. Have you forgotten? I’m the winter-shepherd here.”
11
It took Radnar half an hour to reach the high plateau.
In his absence, the sheep had scattered. With gruff shouts, he brought them in, herding them into a central huddle. As he did, he called to the being that haunted them.
“Come and show yourself. Am I not the only here you haven’t harmed? And am I not alone, vulnerable? Come … take me on, if you dare!”
There was no reply.
Radnar bellowed challenges until his throat was sore. He cursed, swore, called down blasphemies. And then, from nowhere, the voice he’d heard that one time before whispered again into his ear.
“Radnar … stop your shouting.”
Radnar whipped his broadsword from its scabbard. “Whoever you are, this time you die.”
“But I’ve already died, Radnar. For you. And this is the thanks I get? Anger, threats?”
Radnar turned helplessly around. “Show yourself. Don’t hide in the dark.”
“I’m here, Radnar. Look harder.”
On the far side of the pasture, beyond the fleecy backs of the sheep, Radnar spotted a radiant figure. At first he was dazzled, and had to shield his eyes. “Who are you?”
“Look at me, Radnar. Look at me and know my name.”
Slowly, Radnar lowered his arm – and now the radiance wasn’t so intense, and the figure was clearly human and male. He was tall but slender, dressed in a simple white shift, which was bound in a knot over his left shoulder, exposing his right arm and upper right chest. He wore nothing else, yet the night cold was no trouble to him.
Radnar approached, wading through the undisturbed flock. “You know me, yet I don’t know you!” he growled. “Do I know you?”
“Look at me, Radnar, and answer the question for yourself.”
Radnar stepped closer until he could peer directly into the stranger’s face. And though it was a nondescript face – the face of any ordinary, work-a-day fellow – there was an exotic, vaguely eastern aspect to it. Curling black hair fell down to the shoulders, and grew on the cheeks and jaw in a thick beard and moustache. There was something manly but also fragile about that face. The eyes were bright and clear, the mouth upturned in a smile of friendship, but not friendship of the hardy, back-slapping sort – something more brotherly, more meaningful.
And then Radnar saw the blood, several trickles of which appeared through the man’s hairline and proceeded onto his brow. There was blood on the palms of his hands as well, and on the right side of his torso, as though a spear-wound had been made there.
When the full meaning of this struck him, he wanted to cry out, to sink to his knees.
“You …” he stuttered, “you cannot be …”
The face itself was now familiar. Not strictly the same, but when he looked at it clearly, hadn’t he seen its likeness on mosaics and Roman frescoes, on Byzantine coins, on Saxon weavings?
“And still you don’t believe,” the stranger said sadly.
“But … why?” Radnar stammered. “Why would you come here? To me?”
“Why should I not?” The stranger’s smile took on a parental aspect. “Are you not tortured inside? Do you not temper your worship of my Father with your desire to honour the old powers who held your ancestors in cruel enslavement?”
“
But I’m just one man … I mean nothing?”
“Did you not risk your life for me at Stiklestad? I assure you, Radnar … my son, my brother … that means more than nothing.”
“But why are you here?”
“To test you, of course.”
“To test me? I’ve been tested many times already, Lord.”
Despite the wounds torn in his hands, the stranger made a wide gesture with them. “Your courage is beyond doubt. Why else are you here in the face of the evil that stalks this place? But courage alone will not gain you admittance to my feast-hall.”
“I … I don’t know what else to do. I’m a fighter by nature. If I could only hunt down the demon that torments my uncle …”
“Radnar … Radnar.” Again the stranger smiled, and it was a picture of fondness. “Such Earthly strife is no concern to me. I look deeper into men’s hearts.”
“Then what would you have me do, Lord?”
“Prove your devotion to me, once and for all.”
“How?”
“The same way I was once challenged. Though, in your case, the victory will be to obey, not resist.” The stranger pointed over Radnar’s shoulder. “That crag towers above your uncle’s midden, does it not?”
Radnar looked beyond the pasture, to where the land rose in a steep, boulder-strewn slope. At its southern edge there was a precipice and a plunging drop.
“I believe it does.”
“I would have you climb that, Radnar … and cast yourself down onto the roof of your uncle’s long-hall.”
Radnar was stunned. “It must be four-hundred feet!”
“You think I will let you fall? You think my angels won’t bear you back in perfect safety?”
“But how …”