Who's Afraid of Beowulf

by Tom Holt

  ‘You’re never satisfied, are you?’ said Prexz, emerging from the wire and hopping lightly down to the ground. ‘You want magnetism on it, you do.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Zxerp. He climbed out of the copper core and dropped rather heavily. ‘Ouch,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘I think I’ve hurt my ankle.’

  They strolled for a while down the empty lane, and paused to gaze out over the misty hills. The cloud was low, so that the peaks were blurred and vague; it was possible to imagine that they rose up for ever to the roof of the sky.

  ‘So whose go was it?’ asked Zxerp after a while.

  ‘Mine,’ replied Prexz. ‘Have you got the dice?’

  ‘I thought you had them.’

  They searched their pockets and found the dice: two tiny cubes of diamond that glowed with an inner light.

  ‘So what are we going to do, then?’ asked Zxerp after each had had a couple of turns. He was in grave danger of being Rubiconned (again) and wanted to distract his companion’s attention.

  ‘Do?’ Prexz frowned. ‘What we like, I suppose.’

  ‘No, but really. We’ve had a break; we ought to be getting back to work.’

  Prexz shook his head vigorously, causing great interference with Breakfast Television reception all over Bettyhill. ‘I’ve had it up to here with work. At the beck and call of every wizard and sorcerer in Caithness, never a moment to call your own - what sort of a life do you call that? I reckon that if we keep our heads down and play our runes right . . .’

  He stopped, and put his hands to his head. Zxerp stared at him, then suddenly he felt it, too: words of command, coming from not far away.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ muttered Prexz. ‘It’s that bloody wizard again.’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ said Zxerp through gritted teeth, ‘how nice it would be not to have to see that Kotkel again.’

  ‘He was the worst,’ agreed Prexz. ‘Definitely the worst.’

  The words of command stopped, and the two spirits relaxed.

  ‘Perhaps if we just hid somewhere,’ Prexz whispered. ‘Pretended to be a bit of static or something . . .’

  ‘Forget it.’ Zxerp was already packing up the game, putting the Community Hoard cards back into their marcasite box. ‘I knew it was too good to last.’

  They started to trudge back the way they had come.

  ‘Do you suppose he did it on purpose?’ asked Prexz. ‘Trapped us in the mound deliberately, or something?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Zxerp gloomily. ‘He’s clever, that wizard.’

  Hildy was not used to sleeping out in the open, but at least it hadn’t rained, and she had been so tired that sleep came remarkably easily. She had had a strange dream, in which everything had gone back to normal and which ended with her sitting at a table in the University library leafing through the latest edition of the Journal of Scandinavian Studies.

  When she opened her eyes, she found that the Vikings were all up and sitting round a fire. They were roasting four rabbits on sticks, which reminded Hildy irresistibly of ice-lollies, and passing round a helmet filled with water.

  ‘Why’s it always my helmet?’ grumbled the horn-bearer.

  For a moment, the pure simplicity of the scene filled Hildy with a sort of inner peace: food caught by skill in the early morning, and clean water from a mountain stream. Then she discovered that a spider had crawled inside her boot, and that she had a crick in her neck from sleeping with her head on a tree-root. She evicted the spider nervously and tottered over to the fire.

  ‘Have some rabbit,’ said Angantyr. ‘It’s a bit burnt, but a little charcoal never killed anyone.’

  Hildy explained that she never ate breakfast. ‘Where’s the King?’ she asked.

  ‘He wandered off with that blasted wizard,’ said the horn-bearer, drying out the inside of his helmet with the hem of his cloak. ‘I think it’s going to rain any minute now,’ he added cheerfully.

  She found the King sitting beside the bank of a little river that rolled down off the side of the fell just inside the wood. He turned and smiled at her, and put a finger to his lips. On the other side of the stream the wizard was standing on one leg, pointing with his staff to a shallow pool. The King was lighting a small fire with a tinder-box.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Hildy.

  ‘Watch,’ replied the King.

  The wizard had started mumbling something under his breath, and almost immediately two large salmon jumped up out of the water and landed in the King’s lap.

  ‘Saves all that mucking about with hooks and bits of string,’ explained the King. ‘Had any breakfast?’

  ‘No,’ said Hildy. ‘But I never—’

  ‘Don’t blame you,’ said the King. ‘Rabbit again, I expect. And burnt, too, if I know them. No imagination. ’

  The wizard had crossed the stream, and the King set about preparing the salmon, while Hildy looked away.

  ‘Kotkel and I have been thinking,’ said the King. ‘Obviously, it’s no good our hanging about out here having a good time and waiting for the enemy to come to us. On the other hand, we aren’t exactly suited for going out and looking for him, although I don’t suppose he’ll be all that hard to find.’

  He threw something into the water, and Hildy winced. As a child, she had had to be taken outside when her mother served up fish with their heads still on.

  ‘So I think we should find somewhere where we can get ourselves organised, don’t you? And there are things we’re going to need. For example, I was never a great follower of fashion, and far be it from me to make personal comments, but does everyone these days wear extraordinary clothes like those you’ve got on?’

  Hildy glanced at the King, in his steel hauberk and wolfskin leggings. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ said the King, ‘we don’t want to appear conspicuous, do we? So we’ll need clothes, and somewhere to stay, and probably other things as well. I’m afraid you’ll have to see to that for us.’

  Hildy didn’t like the sound of that. To the best of her knowledge she had just over two hundred pounds in the bank, and her next grant cheque wasn’t due for three weeks.

  ‘The problem is,’ continued the King, ‘what do we have to trade?’

  Hildy had a brilliant idea. On the King’s tunic was a small brooch of enamelled gold in the shape of a running horse. She pointed to it.

  ‘Could you spare me that?’ she asked.

  ‘A present from my aunt, Gudrun Thord’s-daughter,’ replied the King, looking down at it. ‘I never liked it much. Rich is gold, the gift of earls, but richer still the help of friends. So to speak.’

  He unpinned the brooch and handed it to her. Hildy looked around at the vast empty hills and the dense wood before her.

  ‘I know a couple of dealers in antiquities down in London . . . You remember London?’

  ‘Still going, is it?’ asked the King, raising an eyebrow. ‘You surprise me. I never thought it would last. Go on.’

  ‘They’d pay a lot for this, with no questions asked. Enough to be going on with, anyway.’

  ‘But London is several weeks’ journey away,’ said the King.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Hildy. ‘I’d be away two, at the most three days.’

  The King nodded. ‘I imagine we’ll be able to take care of ourselves for three days. It’ll give us time to think out what we’re going to do. But be careful. For all I know, the enemy is aware of us already.’

  For some reason, Hildy felt rather cold, although the King’s little fire was burning brightly. She had no notion what this strange enemy was, but when the King spoke his name she was conscious of an inexplicable discomfort, just as, although she did not believe in ghosts, she could never properly get to sleep after reading a ghost story.The King seemed to understand what she was thinking, for he put his hand on her shoulder and said: ‘I think you will be able to recognise the enemy when you come across him or his works. I suspect that you know most of them alrea
dy. It will be like a house or a bend in the road which you have passed many times, until one day someone tells you a story about that place - there was a murder there once, or an old mad woman lived there for many years - and the place is never the same again. Here, in these unchanged mountains, I cannot feel properly afraid of my enemy, even though I fought him here once, and smelt his danger in every fold of the land. But now I think his ships are beached somewhere else, and his army watches other roads. I remember that he used to have birds for spies and messengers, ravens and crows and eagles, so that as we marched we knew that he could see us and assess our strength at every turn. I think he has other spies now; and now it is most important that he does not see us. He will look here first, of course, and we are not an army able to do battle; we cannot fight his armies, we can only fight him, hand-to-hand in his own stronghold - if we can find it and get there before he finds us and squashes us under his thumb.’

  The King stopped speaking and closed his eyes, but Hildy could not feel afraid, even though fear was all around her, for the King was here with his champions, and he would find a way.

  ‘The salmon’s ready,’ he said suddenly. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Hildy, ‘I never eat breakfast. I’d better get going.’

  ‘Good luck, then,’ said the King, not looking up from his salmon. ‘Be careful.’

  Hildy walked back to the camp, where she had parked the van.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ asked Arvarodd, who was sitting by the fire sharpening arrowheads on a stone.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hildy. ‘I’ll be gone for a day or so. The King needs some things before we start out.’

  ‘Going alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Risky.’ Arvarodd got up and stretched his arms wide. ‘Never mind, I expect you’ll cope. You know all about everything these days, of course, so I don’t suppose you’re worried.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Hildy doubtfully, ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry, though,’ said Arvarodd. He was looking for something in a goat-skin satchel by his side. ‘Come over here,’ he said softly.

  ‘Well?’

  He took out a small bundle of linen cloth and laid it on the grass beside him. ‘When I was in Permia,’ he whispered, ‘I did pick up one or two useful things, although I made sure no one ever found out about them, so you won’t have heard of them in any of those perishing sagas. Never saw a penny in royalties out of any of them, by the way. These bits and pieces might come in useful. I’ll want them back, mind.’

  He unrolled the cloth and picked out three small pebbles and a splinter of bone, with a rune crudely carved on it.

  ‘Not things of beauty, I’ll grant you,’ he said, ‘but still. This pebble here is in fact the gallstone of the dragon Fafnir, whom Sigurd Sigmundarsson slew, as you know better than I. Improbable though it may sound, it enables you to understand any language of men. This remarkably similar pebble comes from the shores of Asgard. If you throw it at something, it turns into a boulder and flattens pretty well anything. Then it turns back into a pebble and returns to your hand. This bone is a splinter of the jaw of Ymir the Sky-Father. Ymir could talk the hind legs off a donkey, and this makes whoever bears it irresistibly persuasive. And this,’ he said, prodding the third pebble with his forefinger, ‘was picked off the rough-cast on the walls of Valhalla. I never found out what it does, but I imagine it brings you good luck or something. ’

  He rolled them back up in the cloth and gave it to her. She tried to find words to thank him, but none came.

  ‘You’d better be going,’ he said, and she turned to go. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘I will. It’s not dangerous, really.’

  ‘Did you really read my saga?’

  Hildy nodded.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wrote it myself,’ said Arvarodd gruffly, and he walked away.

  Danny Bennett’s definition of an optimist was someone who has nothing left except hope, and he felt that the description fitted him well. Ever since he had joined the BBC, straight from university, his career had seemed to drift downhill, albeit in a vaguely upwards direction. True, he had made a reputation for himself with the less intense sort of documentary, the sort that people like to watch rather than the sort that is good for them, but although his work interested the public it was not, he felt sure, in the Public Interest. While all around him his colleagues were exposing scandals in the Health Service and uncovering cover-ups with the enthusiasm of small children unwrapping their Christmas presents, he was traipsing round historic English towns doing series on architecture, or lovingly satirical portraits of charming eccentrics. Better, he thought, to suffer the final indignity of producing ‘One Man and His Dog’ than to be caught in this limbo of unwanted success.

  As he sat in the editing suite with visions of the Cotswolds flickering before him, he had in his briefcase the synopsis of his life’s work, a startling piece of investigation that would, if carried through with the proper resources, conclusively prove that the Milk Marketing Board had been somehow connected with the assassination of President Kennedy. He had seen its pages become dog-eared with unresponsive reading, and always it had returned, admired but not accepted, along with a command to go forth and film yet another half-baked half-timbered village green. All around him teemed the modern world, sordid and cynical and infinitely corrupt, but he was seemingly trapped in the Forest of Arden.

  He wound his way painfully through the material in front of him, and for only the fifteenth time that hour wished a horrible death on his chief cameraman, who seemed to believe that people looked better with trees apparently growing out of the tops of their heads. He picked up the telephone beside him.

  ‘Angie?’ he said. ‘Is Bill still in the building?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bennett.’

  ‘Find him, and personally confiscate that polarising filter. He’s used it five times in the last six shots, and it makes everything look like my daughter’s holiday snaps. And tell him he’s an incompetent idiot.’

  ‘There’s been a call for you, Mr Bennett,’ said Angie. ‘I think somebody wants you to do something.’

  Danny Bennett could guess what. There had been a news report that morning about some fantastic archaeological find up in the north of Scotland, and he had felt the threat of it hanging over him all day, like a bag of flour perched on top of a door he must walk through. Five days on some windswept moor, and all the delights of a hotel bar full of sound-recordists in the evenings. He plodded through the rest of the editing, and went to investigate.

  ‘You want to talk to Professor Wood, Department of Archaeology, St Andrews,’ he was told. ‘He’s on site at the moment with an archaeological team. Apparently, there’s gold and a perfectly preserved Viking ship. Sort of like Sutton Hoo only much better.’

  ‘And Professor Wood actually found the ship, did he?’

  ‘No, it was one of his students or something. But Professor Wood is the one who’s in charge now.’

  ‘But I’ll have to talk to this student,’ Danny said wearily. ‘What was it like to be the first person in two thousand years, and all that. Can you find out who this person is?’

  He went to the bar for a drink before going home to pack. One of his colleagues, a rat-faced woman called Moira, grinned at him as he sat down.

  ‘You drew the short straw, then? That Caithness nonsense with the Viking ship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m just off to do an in-depth investigation into a corrupt planning inquiry in Sunderland. Nuclear dumping. Wicked alderman. Rattle the Mayor’s chain.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘It will be, with any luck. Plenty of nice gooey evil in these local-government stories.’ She grinned again, but Danny didn’t seem to be in the mood.

  ‘There’s a rumour that there’s a story in this Scottish thing, actually,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Danny to his drink. ‘The V
ikings didn’t get planning permission for their mound.’

  ‘The girl who found the thing,’ said Moira, ‘has apparently vanished. Not at her hotel. Hired a van and made herself into air. Can it be that she has looted the mound and absconded with a vanful of Heritage? Or are more sinister forces at work up there among the kilts and heather? You could have fun with that.’

  Danny shrugged his shoulders. ‘May be something in it,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps’ - Moira looked furtively round and whispered - ‘perhaps it’s the Milk Marketing Board. Again.’

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ said Danny.

  It took Hildy some time to get used to the idea that she was still in Britain in the twentieth century and that, so far as she could tell, no one was hunting for her or trying to kill her. As she waited for the bus to Inverness, having dumped the hired van outside Lairg, she had the feeling that she ought, at the very least, to be using false papers and a forged driving licence, and in all probability be speaking broken French as well. But she put this down to having seen too many movies about the Resistance, and settled back to endure the long and unpleasant journey.

  She made her way uneventfully to the railway station, bought a copy of Newsweek, and read it as the train shuffled through northern Britain. It was unlikely, of course, that even in that great rendezvous of conspiracy theories the rising of the sorcerer-king would be reported in so many words, but at the back of her mind she had an inchoate idea of where the enemy might be found. Something the King had said about magic had started her thinking and, although her idea was scarcely distinguishable from healthy American paranoia, that was not in itself a reason for discarding it. God, guts and paranoia made America great.

  As she picked her way with difficulty through the various items - for she had been in England a long time now, and found the language of her native land rather tiring in long bursts - she began to feel aware of some unifying theme. There happened to be a long article about a group of companies, a household name throughout the world. Then there was another article about advances in satellite communications, and a discussion of the techniques of electoral advertising. There were several letters about commercial funding of universities, and a great deal about nuclear power, apparently cut from the great bolts of similar material that hang in all editorial offices. The whole thing seemed to make some sort of left-handed sense, and she started again from the beginning. The more she read, the more sense it seemed to make, although what the sense was she could not quite grasp. She told herself that she was probably imagining it, and went to the buffet-car for a coffee.