Fenrir

by MD. Lachlan

  Jehan didn’t have time to think how strange it was that he, who had been so afflicted he couldn’t even perform the most basic functions of life without help, was now shooting forwards through the bone-biting cold of the river to rescue a man who had been hailed a mighty hero by King Sigfrid.

  Ofaeti had nothing to cling to, nothing to stop him being carried back towards Paris and the Viking camp; that, though, was the least of his worries. The water was numbing and the current strong. Jehan, though, was quick through the water, arrowing towards his target. The confessor seemed guided, the big man his clear objective, despite the dark, the rain and the swift-running waters.

  In four breaths he was on Ofaeti, taking him in a powerful grip.

  ‘No good,’ said Ofaeti. ‘I will pull you down. Let go of me.’

  Jehan said nothing, just kicked for the shore. The current was strong but he was stronger, and he quickly made the bank, dragging Ofaeti out of the water. The big Norseman lay spluttering on the cold grass.

  Upstream Jehan could see Rollo’s forces hesitating on the opposite bank, peering through the darkness. On their side of the river the other berserkers were moving off.

  ‘Your friends are making for the trees,’ said Jehan. ‘We had better join them. I need your protection on the way to Saint-Maurice.’

  Ofaeti lay back, his arms above his head, trying to get his breath.

  ‘How can you see so far? I can hardly see past my own boots in this darkness.’

  ‘You’re shocked from the cold,’ said Jehan. ‘You’ll regain your eyes soon enough.’

  Ofaeti got to his feet. Jehan looked at the Viking’s face. The big man was staring at the confessor with something approaching fear.

  ‘My eyes are good enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s go before Rollo’s men gain the courage to cross. I thank you for what you did for me.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, thank God. None is saved nor lost but by His will.’

  Ofaeti nodded.

  ‘Will you pray with me?’ said Jehan.

  Ofaeti gave a short laugh. ‘When we are safe from our enemies, if it pleases you, I will. If it’s your god that saved me, then Lord Tyr won’t begrudge me giving him thanks.’

  The confessor smiled. Was this what God had freed his limbs for – to convert the heathens? It had to be. He had thought none of the berserkers would ever return from Saint-Maurice. Now he saw a different way. These men would make formidable soldiers for Christ. They would welcome Jesus and his divine presence into their hearts, which would drive out the pagan lies they had been raised to. ‘Lord Tyr’ would be exposed for what he was, nothing more than a shade in a story that any child could see through.

  ‘Come on then,’ said Jehan. ‘Follow close if you can’t see your way.’

  The two men scrambled up the bank and ran towards the line of trees.

  33 One Gift Demands Another

  In Ladoga, all those years before, the healer had sat and watched what he confidently expected to be his last dusk turning the river to a winding path of flame, like the road to hell. He was a Bulgar, a happy, dark little man dressed in bright yellow silks that did nothing for his pale complexion. Helgi had gone down to be with his warriors and the healer was alone on the roof apart from the little girl.

  He shook his head and thought of the warning his father had given him: ‘You have a talent, but use it sparingly. Cure too many and the gods will be jealous.’

  He hadn’t listened, of course, and had travelled from all the way beyond Kiev practising his trade. The charms and the potions were what he sold, but he knew that these, which his father had taught him, were only useful up to a point. The real secret of his success was that he had worked his first years for little or no pay, just taking a meal when he needed it. All he asked in return was that, if he was successful, people spread the word.

  It had worked. The healed sang his praises and the dead never complained. By his third year he was sought all over the east. And then he had heard that Helgi was seeking a new physician. Like a fool, he had been pleased when the king had chosen him, not realising that a healer relies as much on his luck and reputation as on his skill.

  He looked down at the child beside him. She was hot enough to set fire to the roof. She would burn him up too, for sure, if he didn’t cure her. It occurred to him to simply jump from the tower to save himself the pain of the flames. He had nothing more to give. His last hope had been to take her to the roof, to show her to the eyes of Tengri the eternal sky, but it was failing.

  But then he remembered he had been taught a charm by a stranger who had joined him on the road to Kiev. He’d been travelling with a party of Khazars who were heading west. They’d kept their fire going all night because there was a rumour that a wolf was stalking the road. The healer had no liking for wolves and had found it difficult to sleep. Of course there always were wolves – he heard their howling in the hills – but to be told one was nearby and had raided a camp, taking only a goat when it could have taken a child, unsettled him.

  Eventually, in the blackest part of the night when the clouds ate the moon and the only light came from the campfire, he had drifted off, slumping to the ground from his sitting position. A low snarl tight by his ear had snapped him back to consciousness. The wolf was sitting close by his side. He had started to scream but suddenly a hand was across his mouth, silencing him.

  A voice: ‘You were about to cry wolf but which wolf is it that gives you alarm? The one that sits by the fire or the one who dwells in here?’ He felt a sharp prod in his chest, and when the hand at his mouth was released he turned to see a very strange fellow indeed. The man was tall, pale and beardless, with a shock of red hair protruding from beneath the bloody pelt of a wolf, worn as he had seen some shamans wear them, its head over his head, as if the creature had crept up behind him and sunk its teeth into his skull. Apart from that, he was entirely naked, his pale skin writhing with snakes of firelight.

  The healer looked around for the wolf. It was gone.

  ‘There was a wolf here,’ said the healer.

  ‘Now it is here,’ said the stranger and drove his finger into the healer’s chest again.

  ‘I do not take your meaning, sir,’ said the healer.

  ‘Ambition is a wolf, is it not, that chases us on to who knows what heights? So I say again, here is the wolf.’ Once more the stranger’s finger jabbed hard into the healer’s chest.

  ‘Do desist from poking me so, sir,’ said the healer. ‘I bruise easily.’

  ‘Do you not have a salve for bruises?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘What can you cure? For I see you are a healer by your charms and philtres.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Headache?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man cuffed the healer hard about the head.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Vomiting?’

  ‘Yes, I—’

  The man thumped the healer hard in the stomach, so hard that his dinner came back up and he was sick on the ground.

  ‘Broken limbs?’

  ‘I have some skill—’ The man raised his hand but the healer quickly added, ‘—though not in that area.’

  ‘Ah, the gift of healing is so rare nowadays. It is hard to tell the honest man from the charlatan.’

  ‘I am a truthful man.’

  ‘All the best liars are. You are the king of charlatans because the first person you deceive is yourself. You are sincere in your insincerity, truthfully false. Liars have more truths in them than all the honest men of the world. You lie to yourself so much that you empty yourself of them. Then, when you tell the people you can heal them, that cannot be false, for all you have left in you are truths, so men must believe them. You eat lies and belch truth, such is the way of the self-deceiver. Sincere thieves are the best ones, I tell you most earnestly. The gold ring you wear on the chain about your neck, I need it. Pass it to me.’

  ‘Need it for what?’

  ‘It is a cure for the lyi
ng tongue.’

  The healer had thought at the time that seemed a reasonable explanation and had taken off the chain to give it to the man who, if he recalled correctly, had dangled it above his lips before lowering it into his mouth and swallowing it whole.

  ‘That was my ring,’ said the healer.

  The strange man leaned towards the healer and it seemed that his head became that of a gigantic wolf which opened its mouth improbably wide and said, ‘It prettifies my bowels now. Reach in and tickle it out!’ He spoke with such force that the healer flinched away from him.

  ‘You will bite my arm,’ said the healer. For some reason it didn’t seem odd that this man had become half wolf.

  ‘You see,’ said the half-wolf. ‘I have cured the liar in you, for now you speak the truth.’

  ‘What shall I have for my ring?’

  ‘Advice,’ said the wolf-headed man, smacking his lips with his tongue as if savouring the taste of the fine gold ring.

  ‘What advice?’

  ‘Go north.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To wait upon the lord of deceit himself. He who lies lying in Ladoga. That priest of pretence, hierophant of hypocrisy, monarch of mendacity, the tricky sticky fellow, the fakir of fakement, the wolf in wool, oath-breaker, foreswearer and god. King Shit himself. I am his servant, you know, but like all servants I hold my master in cold contempt. I will better him one day, though it may take me a year or two. Today we give him what he wants; tomorrow he may not be so lucky.’ The half-wolf’s tongue slapped around his muzzle as he spoke, and the healer feared the creature might fly into a rage.

  ‘You’re talking about Helgi the Prophet?’

  ‘Helgi? Do you know his physician has found all ailments’ surest cure? You should hurry to that king’s service.’

  ‘I cannot compete with a man who holds such knowledge.’

  ‘This is the cure!’ said the half-wolf, and from somewhere he produced a hangman’s noose tied with a tricky triple knot. ‘Surely you can hang as well as he. There is no talent for hanging, my fine fibber, no skill to it – the most untutored farm boy takes to it as well as the highest king.’

  ‘I do not wish to hang,’ said the healer.

  ‘Only he wishes to hang. Only he.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He is three.’

  ‘Three what?’

  ‘People!’ He cuffed the healer across the back of the head. ‘A triple knot like this, waiting to be tied. And what is a knot that is not tied? Not a knot? Not so. For if a rope is not a knot then all things are not knots that are not knots and that is not a useful distinction. However, a rope that has been a knot but is a knot no more is more not a knot that one that has never been tied, which nevertheless is still not a knot. So we have degrees of notness matching our degrees of knotness, former, present or future, the triple knot of time. When something has once been something else, can it ever be what it once was again? I think knots. And what is a knot unknotted? Not a knot. And if the knot is retied? It becomes not not a knot, that is a knot once more. This is not a knotty problem, though it does concern knots, does it not? Three of them.’ The creature seemed exasperated, as if he had explained the obvious to the healer and found him simply too dim-witted to understand.

  ‘You are a man of the Christian god. I have heard their tales of three in one but I prefer my own gods for the luck they have brought me,’ said the healer.

  ‘Who are your gods?’

  ‘The sky and the blue of the sky.’

  ‘How conveniently ungraspable,’ said the wolf. ‘They’re all at it nowadays – mysteries and cant. What would you say to a god who gave you something actually useful? A solid god, a big pale, beautiful flame-haired immortal who occasionally likes to appear as a wolf?’

  ‘I would follow him.’

  ‘And if he didn’t want scabby scratchy followers like you?’

  ‘I would … I would …’

  The half-wolf put his fingers to the healer’s mouth and slapped him on the back with the other hand so that he coughed out air.

  ‘I would say thank you,’ said the healer as the creature manipulated his lips to form the words.

  ‘I will offer you a charm.’

  ‘And what must I do to get it?’

  ‘Go to Helgi, take his gold. But let his little girl, the one fierce in heart, drink this.’

  ‘Drink what?’

  The wolf took a bottle from the healer’s pack and poured its contents onto the floor. Then he bit deeply into his hand until blood dripped into the bottle.

  ‘I offer rare bargains to those who please me.’

  ‘I will take your charm.’

  The creature put the bung of cloth back into the bottle.

  ‘Here is the charm,’ he said. ‘Congratulations. You are an instrument of destruction. But be of good cheer. It is death that we destroy. We are its enemies.’

  He scratched something onto a piece of birch bark and passed it to the healer.

  ‘This one must the sons of men know, those who would heal and help. Carve it once when you need it most. It calls forth the fever.’

  On the roof, under the stars, the healer didn’t know how he had forgotten that night. How had he forgotten the fever charm? It had not seemed at all strange to him to sit talking to a man who was also a wolf. It had not seemed strange when he had given the girl the blood for a fainting fit she had suffered one day. And it had been alarming, but not strange, when the fever had fallen upon her shortly afterwards.

  He stripped a piece of bark from the roof with his little knife and carved the sign the stranger had given him. He didn’t know what to do with it so he just put it on the girl’s chest.

  *

  The girl spoke – ‘Liar. Where are you, liar?’ – and sat upright, clutching the bark to her, staring wide-eyed over the town.

  Then he was no longer alone on the roof. Beside him, squatting next to the girl, was the pale flame-haired man.

  He smiled at the merchant and chanted,

  ‘When I see up in a tree

  A corpse swinging from a noose,

  I can so carve and colour the runes

  That he walks and talks with me.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said the healer.

  ‘I am a fever,’ said the pale man, ‘a fire to light the bones within you.’

  ‘You are a man. I have seen you before.’

  ‘House-rider, troll-witch,’ said the man to the healer, ‘make your way back to your shape.’

  The little girl did not understand the literal meaning of his words but understood the man was telling the healer to return to being something he had once been before.

  The healer climbed down through the hole in the roof and the pale man sat holding the girl’s hand. She stirred and looked up at him.

  ‘I have dreamed of you,’ she said.

  ‘And I of you. What did I say in your dream?’

  ‘My home is in the darkness,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am of the dark.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there a darkness near here?’

  ‘They have found one under Gillingr’s barrow,’ said the pale man. ‘Would you like to see it?’

  ‘I would see it,’ said Sváva. ‘I know you. You are the wolf’s father. The begetter of death.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a fierce heart, everyone says it. I am not afraid of you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What am I?’

  ‘A little broken thing,’ said the man, hugging the girl to him.

  ‘Will I ever be mended?’

  ‘First you need a little darkness, where the lights inside you can shine,’ said the pale man. ‘Do you fear the dark?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then come with me.’

  Sváva went down the ladder in the loading tower, past the winch that pulled up the goods, where the healer now hung from a rope like a forgotten sack, and out of the town, hand
in hand with the pale man.

  They went to the barrow, the naked grave, its black mouth open to the stars. The height of two men down was a deeper darkness, a hole.

  ‘The Romans mined here,’ said the man, ‘but bad luck dogged them. Many men were sacrificed, by accident and design. Mercury was worshipped here. He lived here. Old man Odin, to you modern people. This is the place.’

  ‘What place?’

  ‘The appointed place. Here the things that need to be seen can be seen.’

  ‘These tunnels are a city beneath the earth and its people are the dead,’ said Sváva.

  ‘You can see that already?’ said the man.

  ‘Yes.’

  The pale figure trembled and let go of her hand. ‘You are sure you are not afraid of the dark?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think rather it is afraid of me. See how it shrinks from me. Even in there it dare not face me.’

  ‘The dark is a wolf who runs from fire.’

  ‘I am a fire.’

  ‘You are a fire.’

  ‘I would talk with these dead fellows,’ she said. ‘The ghosts must be merry now they have no lives to lose.’

  ‘Then go in.’

  The little girl walked forward and bent to the mouth of the hole. Then she crouched down and crawled inside. The god smiled his wolf smile and turned away.

  In his great hall, Helgi was dreaming of the vast offerings he had given to Odin – the warriors he had taken in battle, the slaves and the cattle, the gold cast into mires. He saw himself piling them up – the bodies of animals and men, the treasures of silver and gold – but every time he looked away from the pile it seemed to shrink, requiring ever more corpses, ever more jewels to make it look right again. Dreams have their own sense of right and wrong, and to Helgi it seemed that a body hoard was only satisfactory when it challenged the mountains with the shadow it cast.

  In his dream Sváva stood in front of him, a pale child in a dirt-stained shift.