by Jenna Grey
Polly stood, not even sure of what she was doing or where she was going, but knowing that she had a task to perform that was more important than life itself. She should have been afraid, should have been terrified, but although her heart was hurrying in her chest and her breathing ragged, she wasn’t feeling real fear. It was as if someone had laid a hand on her shoulder to calm her; she knew there was someone there with her, someone who was keeping her safe.
“Polly?” Finn asked, putting his hand on her arm to pull her back. She was aware of his hand there, but it didn’t seem real, just an illusion – something that was, but wasn’t.
“Let her go, Finn,” Bert said, standing up. “Just stay close and follow her.”
Polly had no idea where she was going, but she began walking, just letting her feet take her where they wanted to go, pushing through the milling crowd of people that were there, but not there. She was aware that some of them were in modern clothes and she felt Finn steering her around them, but they were intangible wraiths, not nearly as real as the women in long rough dresses, or the wild-haired men. There were houses on either side, tiny, wattle-and-daub buildings with wood-plank roofs that looked like toy houses, carved by an unskilled hand. Beneath her feet was mud and vile sludge, a scraggy dog was yapping at her feet; no, not her feet – the feet she looked down on were large, covered in rough leather. And there in front of her was the tall spire of the church, high above the rooftops of the tiny houses as if it was trying to touch Heaven.
There was a dawning realisation that she wasn’t Polly any more, well, part of her was, but not all of her. She was looking down on the people around because she was taller than most of them; she could feel her bulk, the strong muscles, the powerful thighs. She mustn’t be seen, she knew that. He knew that. If they had found him, his death would be terrible, but swathed in a cloak, who would recognise him?
Polly was finding it hard to put her thoughts in order because there were too many for her to disentangle – his thoughts, her thoughts, and his were far louder than hers. She knew the voice, but didn’t know it.
“Who are you?” someone else asked. For a moment Polly wasn’t sure, then it came to her with startling clarity.
“I’m Sigurd Thorgeirsson, second son of Urif Axe Hammer and Inga daughter of Leif Gudmundsson,” she said. Her words sounded strange, catching in her throat.
“Why are you here in Jorvik, Sigurd?”
“That’s my business.” But she realised that she wanted to answer because this was a friend, someone who could help. “To find the Hellstone. It’s here, I must find it, and the Torinstone.”
“The Torinstone?”
“It’s here; they’re both here.” She knew that she had to get them both, no matter what it cost.
“Sigurd, why do you want the Hellstone?”
Polly scanned her cloudy memory for the answer. She did want it – it was an all-consuming yearning. Polly let out an anguished sigh which emptied her heart.
“To bring my son, Bragi, back to me. He didn’t die in battle and won’t be allowed to enter Valhalla. If I can bring him back, then he can fight again and die an honourable death. I will not let him spend eternity in Helheim.”
Sigurd’s pain was visceral, a cramp in her stomach that made her feel physically sick. She wanted this to stop, but the dagger hilt felt as if it was welded to her hand and she couldn’t let it go.
“What does the Torinstone do, Sigurd? Why is that important?”
She suddenly felt intense hatred, a feeling that was alien to her, something she had never felt in her life, even towards her uncle; it burnt through her like bile.
“It sends those you choose to Hel’s domain. I want Hallfrid Iricsson to pay for what he’s done to my family. I will send him and his army into eternal damnation!”
Polly was still walking, like a somnambulist, her footsteps unsteady. She was aware of others following her, but they weren’t part of her world. There were stone steps in front of her; she could see them clearly, steep stone steps stretching downwards into the darkness of an underground room. Then they were gone, and all that was left was a paved floor where the steps should have been. Polly dropped to her knees, passing her hands over the floor as if she, he, thought that they had vanished by some magic and he might be able to bring them back if they searched hard enough.
“I can’t go down, the steps have gone. But I have to get the stones.” She began to pound at the paving with her closed fists, not even feeling the pain. Hands seized her wrists, and she felt herself being pulled to her feet.
“You’ve already got them, Sigurd, you have them safe,” she heard someone say.
“Yes, they’re safe,” She felt a great sense of relief wash over her. “Yes.”
She could feel the two stones in pouches on her belt, not the same pouch – they should never be touching one another – that would be catastrophic. She closed her hand over the Hellstone, that precious gem that would bring her son, his son, back.
“Where are you going now? Can you tell us?”
Polly struggled to remember.
“Back to my men at Hunta’s Hill – they’re waiting for me, then back to the ships. We need to get back home. I need to go to Bragi’s burial mound.”
Polly felt gentle hands taking something from her; she looked down, seeing large, rough hands, covered in dirt, the knuckles a little bloody. Then they were her hands again, and the whole world vanished.
She opened her eyes to see Finn’s worried face hanging over her. He studied her, a searching look to make sure that she was all right, gently brushing the hair back from her eyes.
“You had us worried there for a minute. Okay now?” he asked.
She nodded without really being certain if she was all right or not. Her knuckles were stinging. She looked down and saw they were grazed from pounding at the pavement.
“I was Sigurd; it was so strange. I really felt as if I were him.”
Bert gave a wry smile, pulling a clean hanky from his pocket and tearing it in two to bind her hands.
“Do you want to know something even stranger? Here and there you were breaking into Old Norse.”
Polly just gawped at him.
“I think you’ve found your gift,” Finn said, ruffling her hair. “Sorry, about your hands; we couldn’t get to you in time.”
Polly was still not quite there, images of days long past slipping in and blocking out the present; it felt as if she were having a really bad trip. She was shaking violently, her teeth chattering and she was so cold. Finn slipped his jacket around her shoulders, and she hugged it around her, letting him put his arm around her shoulders to rub her gently warm. Bram brought out the obligatory flask of whisky, and she took a sip, but all it did was confound her senses even more.
“It was so weird – I was Polly, but I was Sigurd as well. I can still feel him there, even though he’s gone.”
They let her sit for a few minutes to recover and she stopped shaking eventually; she still felt disoriented, though, as if she’d just woken from a vivid, and not especially pleasant, dream.
“Can you tell us any more, anything else that could help us, before the memories fade?” Bert asked.
Polly searched her feelings, and yes, some feelings weren’t hers; she tried to make sense of them, but just like in a dream they were elusive, fleeting and fragmentary.
“I felt overwhelming sorrow and love over the loss of my... his son. He was so desperate to find the Hellstone, to bring his son back. There was so much hate as well, hate for Hallfrid, the man that murdered Bragi. If he had got his hands on him, I think Sigurd would have given him a terrible death. Instead, it was the other way around.” She paused momentarily because she felt she was missing something. There was more to this story, but it had slipped beyond her power of recall.
“He said that he was going to go to his son’s burial mound,” Finn said. “But surely Bragi’s body would have been rotted and useless. He needed a whole body to come back to.”
>
Polly was feeling lightheaded, the whisky kicking in.
“Sigurd packed his son’s body in ice to preserve it until he could get the stone,” she said. The room began to spin round her, and she felt sick. “I feel really weird.”
“We better get you back to the B & B and let you have a little rest,” Bert said. “It’s not every day you get possessed by the spirit of a long-dead Viking. When you’ve had a nice little nap, we have a great deal to talk about.”
Polly felt utterly drained, as if she’d run several marathons back to back. Bert forced her to drink some hot, sweet tea, his answer for all ills and she did feel better afterwards. She could still feel him there, this man, Sigurd, just lurking under the surface; he hadn’t left her entirely. Sharing her body with him had been the strangest sensation and one she didn’t want to repeat. She knew that he wasn’t a good man, but not exactly a bad one either. He would kill without mercy if it suited him, men and women, young and old, but not children, not unless he had to. He had killed them, but he didn’t enjoy doing it; it had plagued his conscience and Polly had the feeling that if he could have turned back time, he would have taken a different course of action. He had sons of his own and two beautiful daughters that he loved with all of his heart. She tried not to judge him because their whole belief system and standard of morality were so different back then; their belief in an afterlife was so strong that their concept of mortality was vastly different to the modern ideal. It was survival of the fittest, and it left little room for mercy. It seemed to Polly that to them life in this world was the punishment, struggling to survive in the most appalling conditions. If they were killed, it was nothing more than a conclusion to the never-ending misery of their existence. Knowing so much about Sigurd made her feel uncomfortable; she had his memories, so many of them. Most of the memories were of blood and killing and hard times, but he was happy with his life for the most part. Then she remembered what Bert had said about how he died, and she hoped that she didn’t ever have to relive that.
They sat in the double bedroom, munching on the sandwiches that Maisie had made for them; there were enough to feed ten people. Maisie seemed to feel that Polly needed feeding up so made a few extra rounds for her. She was surprisingly hungry, famished in fact. She daren’t even think how much energy she’d used up in the last hours. Sigurd was still lurking in the back of her head somewhere, but growing more and more distant with every passing minute.
“Well, we’ve learnt a lot more than we bargained for today. Poor wee Polly here certainly has,” Bram said, biting into a three-inch thick ham sandwich.
“We have to take all of this as a good sign, that we are being helped. I never expected any of this,” Bert said. We would never have known about the Torinstone if it were not for Polly’s link with Sigurd. That could ultimately be our salvation.”
“I wish we knew more about this Torinstone,” Finn said, “Is there anything else you can tell us about it, Bram?”
“I wish I could, but I didna even know about the Hellstone until Bert here told me what he knew. As far as I can see the Torinstone is the opposite of the Hellstone – one stone brings them out of Helheim, and the other puts them in. They’re both far too dangerous to be in the hands of the unscrupulous.”
“Can you imagine what Gaunt could do with it?” Finn asked. “He could call up armies of the dead, hordes of demons to run riot over the earth and send good people to Helheim. It would be the end of the world – no wonder your uncle wanted it so badly.”
Bert let out a frustrated sigh.
“And now he has it.”
“I wonder why he hasn’t used it yet?” Polly asked. There was a worrying silence.
“I’ll say it, even if nobody else has got the guts to,” Finn said. “I think that he’s missing a component, something he needs before he can start.”
“He needs me,” Polly said, feeling her bladder weaken.
Finn didn’t need to answer, Polly could see the truth written on his face.
“I think so. I’m sorry, but I really think so – you know it as well as I do, Dad. Polly is a part of this somehow. That’s the reason he wanted so much for her to go back to them.”
“Yes, I’m sad to say you’re probably right. It may be because you do have such a strong connection with Sigurd, something none of us could have expected. Perhaps your uncle needs an incantation or spell that only Sigurd knew to make it work and you are his means of getting it. Did he ever give any indication that he thought you were an especially gifted psychic?”
Polly ‘hmmphed’.
“Never – as far as he was concerned, I was just the dishwasher. I didn’t know I was strongly psychic until Liam told me – and even then I didn’t believe him.”
“Well, it’s no good second guessing,” Finn said, slipping his hand over hers. “We just have to make certain that you’re protected at all times.”
Bert stood, stretching his back and giving a groan as it clicked back into place. The poor old soul really was suffering for the cause, unlike Bram, who was made for adventure. Bert was a book man, happy sitting at a desk, not traipsing around the countryside digging up bones.
“We’re all far too exhausted to think too much about this now. Tomorrow we head northeast. I think I can navigate us to our next stop along the route,” Bert said.
“Aye, enough for one day,” Bram said, bouncing to his feet and looking as if he could tackle another 24 hours without even a cat nap. “Tomorrow is going to be a long one.”
Polly didn’t need reminding.
Polly was ready to drop by the time Bram and Bert left, and she practically crawled into the large double bed, not even bothering to clean her teeth or change into her nightie; she just peeled off the top layer and slept in her bra and pants. Finn held her in his arms, safe, and did no more than kiss her softly and tell her to go to sleep because she needed every scrap of her strength. Polly had to admit she was grateful – as much as she would have loved to make love to Finn, just the thought of moving was enough to exhaust her. She was aware of Finn creeping from the bed, to go and sit in the chair and she saw the faint light of the dim lamp flick on somewhere over on the other side of the room. Finn picked up the boring book and settled down for the night. She was too tired to question it and too sleepy to care.
She dreamt that night of strange things, a village that she knew but didn’t know, a wife, whose face was elusive, just a large blonde woman with wide hips and bright eyes. She found it didn’t trouble her, she let the images come and go, until finally, she fell into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning they bade farewell to the Shangri-La, Bed and Breakfast and the indomitable Maisie, and set off for the ‘long day’ that Bram had promised. Bram had sorted out camping equipment for them, and Polly had the feeling that the next few nights weren’t going to be quite as comfortable as the last few had been. She didn’t really mind, it was all in a good cause and despite everything, being with Finn made it all more than bearable.
Polly dozed for most of the journey, resting her head on Finn’s shoulder and still feeling strangely disoriented, not quite part of this reality. The scenery just rolled past the window, a stretch of never-ending green, broken intermittently by slabs of grey buildings.
They reached Huntingdon and parked in a lay-by. The bulk of the large village seemed to comprise of new houses, row upon row of them, and it was hard to imagine this place in Anglo Saxon times. There was probably a quaint old village of Huntingdon tucked away somewhere in the vicinity, but they weren’t here to sight-see – this was business, pure and simple. Back in Sigurd’s day, there would have been nothing here at all, except perhaps the odd farmstead. Polly wondered what Sigurd would have thought if he could see this place now.
“Well, we’re here, but we don’t really know how much further north we need to go. I feel that we’re on the right track, though,” Bert said. “If Polly’s willing, it might not be a bad idea for her to take the dagger
hilt again and see if she can give us more information. Even if we are just a few degrees out in our navigation, we could end up miles from where we’re supposed to be.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Dad, last time left Polly pretty drained,” Finn said. “I think we might be underestimating Polly’s abilities, even after what we saw yesterday. She might not be able to control it. You know what can happen, Dad.”
Finn gave his father a rather clandestine look, which disturbed Polly a little. She wanted to trust Bert and Finn, but how could she when they were keeping so many things from her?
“Well, according to the old records, we’re just about on the spot where Sigurd set up camp with his men, but it’s still a huge area. We could use some help,” Bram said.
Polly thought about it for a moment. Did she really want to do that again? When it came down to it, what choice did she have?
“I’ll be okay. I was just taken by surprise yesterday, that’s all. If you think I’m in trouble, then just take the dagger hilt away from me. As soon as you took it yesterday, I was fine again in a couple of minutes.” Polly was quite impressed at how convincing that lie sounded. Okay, she was a hypocrite, but it was only a little white lie. Finn looked hard and long at her and then gave a reluctant nod.