by MD. Lachlan
‘Aelis, Aelis!’ her brother was screaming but he couldn’t get to her, he was hemmed in by two opponents. The flickering light of the flames outside fought the darkness of the church; things flashed from the shadows, metal, wood, blade and spear tip, shields, faces, arms and feet. Three times men came at her, trying to grab her and pull her away, but three times the snarling shadows seemed to engulf them before they could touch her and they fell with terrible cries. She kept walking towards the door. Ten pillars from it, eight, now five, now two. She was nearly free. Then the arc of the crescent was sweeping down on her, the curve of flame that was that terrible sword.
‘Aelis, Aelis!’ Her brother’s face was contorted in anguish, as though melting in the heat of the burning buildings. Fire seared her skin; the taste of ashes and blood was in her mouth. The sword was a tongue of lightning stretching towards her. There was a blur of movement, a sound like a sack falling off a cart as the shadows reached out to smash the swordsman to the floor. Then she was running, bundled through the narrow streets by an unseen hand. She glanced behind her, tried to see who was driving her on. It was the wolfman. Even though she was running as fast as she could, he was just sidestepping down the alleyways, watching for pursuers as he drove her forward.
‘Hrafn!’ he screamed back towards the church, then he said something unintelligible, though she could tell it was in the Norse tongue. The words meant nothing to her but she caught their intent clearly. The wolfman was warning away his enemy, telling him that he would die.
She stumbled but the wolfman held her up. Where was he taking her? The moon was a lantern, casting the streets in a bright and empty light but leaving deep shadows beneath the eaves of the buildings.
Then they were out into the square and she saw where they were going – down the alley to the Pilgrims’ Gate. There it was, but locked and guarded. Two men-at-arms came forwards with spears.
‘Lady, we are here for you.’
The wolfman pulled her to a halt, ignoring the advancing warriors, still looking behind him.
‘Up into the house,’ he said. ‘Jump into the water and swim. He will not follow you that way. Fall prisoner to any but him. Do not let him see your face. Do not let him see your face!’
‘Who?’
There were two soft thumps, followed by a sound like the fall of a thousand coins. Both the men-at-arms had collapsed, hauberks crashing to the cobbles. Black-plumed arrows had caught one in an eye, the other through the neck.
‘Go!’ The wolfman leaped to shield her. Another soft thump and a heavy exhalation. The wolfman had taken an arrow to the back. He still had the strength to push her towards a door. She pulled it then pushed it. It opened and she fell into a small house.
Moonlight split the darkness inside and she saw the huddled faces of women and children looking at her in terror. She pushed through them to a ladder to the next floor. The room erupted in screams and clatter, as the crowd tried to avoid her, to get out, to do anything but sit in frozen fear. She went up one level, where sleeping mats were strewn around, and then to another above it, a lightless place. She felt around the walls, trying to locate a window. She bumped into something – a loom. It was a weaver’s house; there had to be a window for light to work by. She tripped and hit the floor heavily, stood up and pressed on, her hands frantic on the walls.
Then she found it. Cloth had been nailed across the window in a poor attempt to keep out the cold. She tore it back and looked out. She was not on the river side but looking into the street. Something down there slipped from shadow to shadow. Was it the wolfman? There was movement beneath the arch of a doorway. Then it stopped. A figure walked forward from the direction of the great church. He went to the arch and knelt at the edge of the dark. She shivered to look at him. He was a lean dark man, his hair thick with tar so it stood up in a shock. Something had been put into it – feathers, black feathers standing up in a horrid crown. He was completely naked, his body smeared in white clay and ashes so it shone under the moonlight, pale as a corpse. In his hand he carried a bow and on his back was an empty quiver and that cruel curved sword she had seen in the church, now housed in a dull black scabbard. There was something wrong with his skin too, she realised. It had a rough quality to it. She squinted forward through the dark. It didn’t look like smallpox, but she was too far away to tell.
The inhabitants of the house were streaming across the square, the women herding the children away. Eight of the Danish invaders came into the square – big men covered in tattoos, the one at the front carrying a large shield with the design of a hammer on it. His sword was drawn and he was pointing it at the naked man, warning him in some way. Not friendly.
The man was oblivious to him; he was tugging at something in the shadows. It was an arrow. It would not come free and, as he pulled it, the body of the wolfman came with it into the light.
‘No!’ said Aelis, and the man turned to her. She threw her hands across her face and peeked out from behind her fingers like a frightened child. He gave a rasping cry of exultation as he saw her and leaped towards the house. The big man with the shield cursed and Aelis scrambled across the room. She lost all composure, knocking over looms, falling over bales, crawling towards the opposite window. She pulled off the vellum covering it and crouched to look down into the river. It was three times her height beneath her.
She couldn’t jump, couldn’t bring herself to do it. She heard the creature make the floor below, his footsteps light and quick. She put a leg out of the window but brought it back again. The drop was too great. She stepped back inside the room and glanced around her. There was the hatch where the ladder emerged. She tried to kick the ladder away but it had been tied tight to the beams and she had nothing to cut it free with. She looked down, remembering the wolfman’s warning to cover her face. There, just visible in the weak light of the floor below, was a face looking back at her, its eyes sharp and pitiless as a bird’s. At first glance she thought that he was wearing a mask of some sort, but as he put his foot on the ladder she could see his face was a network of tiny scars, as were his neck and upper body. It was nothing like leprosy – in places the scars were neat and defined, more like a large pin had dug into him than like the ravages of disease.
He looked up and spoke to her in Latin: ‘Thing of darkness, death bringer, you will not escape me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘A man of honour,’ he said and leaped at the ladder.
And then Aelis was falling. She had done what she thought she could not and gone feet first through the window. The water hit her hard, forcing her wimple over her eyes, blinding her. She struggled for the surface, her skirts heavy and tight about her legs. She pulled off the wimple and cast it aside. The water was so cold, ice meltwater from the hills, crushing the breath from her body, but the current was not strong. The upstream bridge on the south side had partially collapsed. The Norsemen had made an abortive attempt to pile debris, bodies and whatever they could get their hands on onto the ruin to make a causeway to the city. They’d been beaten back but had succeeded in somewhat stemming the considerable force of the river. The downside was that the water was foul. Aelis clamped shut her mouth to avoid swallowing it and struck for the shore. Her country childhood served her well – she was used to swimming in rivers and lakes – though her skirts were terribly restrictive and she had to hold them above her waist and kick with her legs to make progress. Things were smashing into the water about her. A table leg went over her head, then something heavy splashed behind her. She coughed and shook, turned and saw a stream of cloth from a bale flying through the night. Her pursuer had no more arrows and was throwing all he could find. She hammered forward across the river, went under, panicked, her legs pumping wildly. Then she hit something. Solid ground was under her feet. She made one last effort and got to the bank.
She didn’t turn, just kept scrambling up, her flesh shaking on her bones with the terrible cold. She heard the voice of the thing behind her.
; ‘I dag deyr thú!’ he shouted, and then in Latin, ‘This is your death day, monster!’
4 A Necessary Sacrifice
Aelis clawed her way up the bank. She was on the south side of the river, though she couldn’t tell exactly where. That is, she knew where she was in relation to the city but not to the Norse camps. The invaders were on both sides, though she had no idea how far their control extended.
There was still a clamour at the tower on the bridge. To her alarm, she heard the invaders were retreating; the bells had changed their pattern to tell the people the Norsemen had been beaten back. The screams of the fighting were dying and the men-at-arms on the tower were shouting cat calls and insults after their enemies, goading them for running, asking where their famous Viking fury was now.
The enemy would be returning to his camp and Aelis realised that she might well be right in the middle of their retreat. Men were moving through the houses and huts. She saw the outline of someone with an axe across his shoulder, another man with a spear. They could be Danes or they could be her people, she couldn’t be sure. As soon as the bulk of the Norsemen moved to the main attack at the bridge, the Franks would come in from the forest to worry their camp. The number of invaders was so great that no victory could be gained, but they could injure a guard, steal a pig and, most of all, keep a few of the Danes from attacking the city. It was too risky to approach the dark figures, though. Who knew who they were?
Some of the houses were even still inhabited by Franks. It had been a mystery to Aelis why the Northmen had not taken the whole south bank, but her brother had explained it. The houses outside the city wall were very poor and the people many and strong from labour on the land. The Norsemen’s numbers were great, but not so great they could be profligate. They would take the houses, he said, but on their way back. They wanted slaves but had no intention of carrying them upriver if they ever got past the bridges of Paris. They’d be an encumbrance to further looting. They’d allow the Franks to feed and care for themselves until they returned, then they’d take them captive. The Vikings treated the Franks like a cook treats his hens, her brother had said.
She looked up to the weaver’s house, her body still convulsing with cold. The feathered man had gone, but then she saw another face at the window. It was the warrior with the hammer on his shield. He threw the shield into the water and, in an instant, leaped to follow it. Then another man came to the window and jumped too. They were chasing her, and there were a lot of them.
She blundered forward into the darkness of the houses, running as fast as she could. There was another splash behind her, and a shout of complaint as one of the Norsemen hit the river too close to a comrade. She had to find somewhere to hide for the night, to spy out the land and try to find some way back into Paris – or out into the friendly country beyond – before the next day. Even that wouldn’t be easy. She had lost her wimple in the river and her hair was uncovered. The Franks were tolerant people and women could even travel unchaperoned throughout their lands, but with her modesty so badly compromised, there was a chance she’d be taken for a whore for any man to use as he saw fit.
She could not approach anyone male, particularly at night, but if she could find a woman of her own people then she could explain her state of undress, borrow some sort of head covering and stay with her until morning. Then, with luck, she could get back to the city across what remained of the southern bridge. There was enough debris there to make it serviceable to anyone willing to wade and climb their way across. The few provisions the city managed to get came in that way.
A cloud took the moon and the night became very dark. She made her way left, as she knew the Norsemen were camped nearer to the westernmost bridge. She kept low and moved from shadow to shadow, knowing that she could as easily be killed by her own side as by the enemy. But she still couldn’t see who had possession of the houses and couldn’t risk going in.
Then the cloud slipped away from the moon, the river turned to a shining silver path and she saw them – four men with shields in conference, two more heaving themselves up the bank out of the river. She knew that if she stayed she would be discovered, so she ran. She heard a halloo behind her. They’d seen her.
She plunged through the dark as she had plunged through the water, legs thrashing at the ground in an effort to go faster, falling, rising, driving on. The men were fanning out, moving through the houses. She came to the edge of a wood, which she knew stretched up to the top of the hill. She stumbled in, unable to find a track in the dark. Again, the cloud was her friend, blotting out the moon and casting the forest into blackness. She went on anyway, trying to keep silent, to keep her balance, to locate a path, to move quickly – so many contradictory things to do that she achieved none of her goals. She fell for a last time and gave up any attempt to stand. She crawled on through the tearing brambles, the nettles that stung and the stones that cut her knees. The men were crashing about in the woods behind her. She heard a shouted word she recognised. ‘Hundr!’ They were calling for a dog. She was exhausted but had to go on. The moon crept from behind the cloud to reveal a trail, a slick path of flattened grass. She got up and ran to the top of the hill, and over the crest, shouting out in surprise as she saw the little fire.
A man stood up from beside it. He was small, squat and dark with a broad-bladed knife in his hands.
‘Chakhlyk? Volkodlak. Lycos? Lupus?’ She recognised the last two words. Wolf. He came forward, the big knife raised.
She thought of that terrible dream, and of the man who had tried to protect her, who had been a wolf, and also of the thing in her visions, that had said that it loved her. The thoughts never settled to make any sense, but perhaps it was her sensitivity that let her see the connection between the stout little man in front of her and the tall wolfman who had fallen fighting for her. Whatever, she was at his mercy.
She said in Latin, ‘I am Lady Aelis of the Franks, line of Robert the Strong, sister to Count Eudes. I am pursued by Normans and will offer great reward for any that help me.’
The man gave a smile big as a tear in a sheet.
‘You?’ he said. ‘Lady, I was sent on a delegation to meet you here.’
‘By whom?’ She put her hand to her hair, trying to cover it.
There were noises from back down the hill – barking and the cries of men.
‘Prince Helgi of the Rus.’
‘Then, in honour of your prince, can you preserve me? I can’t outrun them. Can you hide me?’ said Aelis.
He stepped towards her and put the knife up to her throat.
‘I am not afraid to die,’ she said.
‘Well, I hope there won’t be any need for that,’ he said. ‘With your permission, lady?’ And then he cut off a huge hank of her hair.
5 Voices in the Dark
The battle in the church had ended. The Vikings had driven the Franks outside and slammed shut the door but now they were trapped. From within, the confessor could hear the Franks assembling in the street, hear their excited cries.
‘They’re inside! They’re inside! We have them.’
The words of the psalm came into his head unbidden, but he would not say them out loud.
‘Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.’
That was in him, to call up the god of the Old Testament, the powerful, protecting, avenging god. Instead, he thanked the Lord for his trial and prayed that the heathens might come to Christ’s peace before they died. God’s will, he thought, was all-encompassing and to complain or show weakness before life’s trials was to rail against Him. If things were so, it was because He wished them to be so.
Around him the Vikings were talking. He knew enough of their language from previous sieges and from more peaceful meetings to understand them. The confessor’s ability with languages was remarkable. Norse had come to him as easily as if he had been raised speaking it.
‘We’re stuck i
n here.’
The confessor could hear the Norsemen pacing around.
‘How many dead?’
‘Of us, none, I think. No one here anyway that I can see. Has anyone got a candle or some reeds?’
‘Sigfrid’s men? How did they do in the fight?’
‘Four. Well, I think it’s four, it’s difficult to tell in here.’
‘It can’t be four. Only four followed us in.’
‘I know. Doesn’t say much for the skills of the king’s warriors, does it?’
‘One of them had a decent sword, though.’
‘You can’t have that, Ofaeti. If his kin see you with it there’ll be trouble.’
‘You’re right. For them.’
Ofaeti. The confessor recognised it as a nickname. ‘Fatty’ was the nearest translation.
‘You’ll have to give it back. I can hardly see in here. Are you not wearing any trousers or shoes?’
‘I’m not, no.’
‘Thank Thor it’s dark, then. Why not?’
‘I was just about to treat one of the camp ladies to the benefit of my expertise when Crow-Arse went up the wall. I didn’t think you’d appreciate it if I stopped to get my finery on before I followed you.’
‘She stole your trousers as soon as you took your eye off her, didn’t she?’
‘You can’t trust whores nowadays,’ said Ofaeti.
Another voice spoke. ‘No wonder the Franks ran away with that dangling at them.’
Laughter.
‘I can’t believe we let ourselves end up in this mess.’ The voice had something of a chuckle in it.
‘Following that shapeshifter was bad luck, for sure.’
‘He would have taken her if we hadn’t. And look on the bright side. We’re surrounded by so many that even you will be able to hit at least one of them, Holmgeirr.’
‘I blame you for this, Ofaeti, this is your god’s doing – Tyr’s blessing, many enemies.’