The story was gone, or made no sense any more, like a fireside tale of heroes that lacked any foe, any monster, or a tale of monsters without heroes to face them. He imagined how you would tell such a story. ‘Listen, and I will relate, a tale of a man and woman who lived forever under the eye of a wolf. They were called to kill the old god Odin when he took flesh on earth, to die with him, so he might offer a sacrifice to the Norns who spin men’s fate at the well of worlds, pay the price of pain and live eternally in the realm of the gods. The bargain was not met. The god died. They lived and now the reason for their sacrifice is gone. Only the sacrifice remains, repeated in many lives and forever.’
This woman beside him, shivering in the boat, was not Beatrice, his wife, reborn; he was not the prince by the water or the wolfman with the sled or the cripple in the forest reborn. But she stood in the place of his wife in the god’s broken story, as he stood in the place of the figures he glimpsed in his memories as the wolf awoke in him. She looked so like her that she could be her but her accent was strange, her face ruddy from a life of toil, her hands rough and her limbs thicker.
He wanted to tell her again he’d missed her for so long, to hold her and comfort her, but he knew he would only be comforting himself. The woman didn’t know him, was afraid of him. He could not even risk being kind to her. She had to have the steel to kill him when they reached the appointed place. Nothing could intrude on that.
The rune within her writhed and simpered, representing itself as a shadow on her face, a shadow on the water, a shape in the mist that turned out to be a tree branch when the boat floated closer.
The current took them and he risked sitting up. The fog was thicker here, the banks just shadows, and at points they could have been in the middle of a lake or a still ocean, only the washed-out light of the moon to see by. Even he, with his wolf-keen senses, could see very little, though here and there fires ambered the mist and he didn’t know if they were fires of life or of death. The girl was freezing on the boat, she was pale and her lips were blue.
She would be red inside; her flesh would split like a pomegranate yielding its colliding flavours of perfume and iron.
Chase away that thought. He needed to find the stone before they went on. He was on the edge of control now. If they were confronted and he was forced to kill, that control might slip. Without the stone, they would never get away, he would never be able to guide her first to find the necessary place and then to kill him. And if she died he was lost. She had survived in the bitter cold so far but the boat was freezing.
He needed to find shelter for her and then search for his stone. He could scent the thief on the damp air, the pelt he had worn about him seeping in rot, still with the fear of the animal’s death upon it. It had been trapped, not hunted, and its secretions told a story of long agony.
He was north but so were others. Loys smelled leather and horses, iron and sweat. Something more. A noise like the fall of water in an ice cave. Runes? They would run from him, he knew. He had to protect Tola.
He took her hand. It was cold as a river rock. She wasn’t even shivering any more.
‘Lady.’
She stirred, sleepy. He shook her. ‘Lady!’ But she would not be roused.
It was clear to Loys that if he didn’t get her to a fire soon she would die. Smoke was on the air, but smoke had been on the air for as long as he could remember in this country. The boat slid along on the gentle current, or he thought it did. The mist was so thick that it was difficult to tell if they were moving at all. Only a suddenly looming branch or turn of the bank confirmed they weren’t floating motionless.
A noise behind him. Oars in the water, heavy breaths, the scent of torches and a breath moving to a different rhythm. A dog. The Normans must have discovered he had gone and were pursuing them. They were at a distance, maybe a mile, but he would not be able to outrow a party of men.
To remain in the boat was to be caught – to kill and to risk his mind sinking into the blood mire. That would place the girl in danger. But a dog might find them in the mist. The Norns spin what they spin and here, on this river, they spun death. It was impossible to avoid it; destiny was a knot that could not be untied. He steered the boat in to the bank and tied it to a stump. The girl was frozen and he hugged her, trying to revive her. It was no good. Fire soon or death. The dog’s sawing breath was nearer, the beat of the oars on water too.
He slipped into the river, the water taking his breath momentarily. He swallowed down his shiver, allowing the wolf to rise up in him, its hostility and vigour coursing through his mind, the warmth of its anger loosening the freezing grip of the water on his chest, allowing him to wade forward. He made his way out along the branch of a fallen tree, twenty paces away from where he had moored the boat. The water came up to his chest but he squatted down until only his head was above the surface and he peered out through the branches.
Their voices were clear on the still air now.
‘We’ll find nothing in this mist, lord.’
‘We’ll find nothing if we don’t look.’
‘If there are Englishmen here we could fall into a trap.’
‘The English are beaten. We are ten warriors, what are you afraid of?’ He coughed. There was a rasp in his breath. Giroie was not well. Did he have the rune?
The hound barked; short, hollow, gulping bays. Loys’s mind was vacant. It was cold. There was noise. The world was reducing to bare facts. Mist, river, prey. An echo of himself sounded in his mind. No blood. There must be no blood. Ten men. He had thought there would be more. Giroie among them.
‘He’s got a scent!’
‘Of a corpse in the water.’
‘Be quiet!’
The Normans stopped speaking but the hound kept on barking
‘Look!’
‘There’s our boat!’
‘Approach it on the bank. We’re dead in the water if they’ve got archers.’
‘He hasn’t got archers, he hasn’t even got any clothes. Row towards it.’
Giroie stood up on the prow of the boat, peering forward like a man trying to spear a fish. Loys saw now that there were runes but, even as he watched them dance, they fled from him.
‘What’s happening. Gylfa, what’s happening?’said Giroie.
‘I don’t know!’
‘Is the magic lifting? I can’t feel it any more.’
‘I don’t know. Lord, I don’t know.’
‘Was this a trick?’
The prow of the rowing boat came past the branch, five paces away. Loys swam under the water, the cold tightening his scalp onto his skull. Three strokes and he was at the boat, seizing the side. He had meant to tip it away from him but his feet slipped on the river bed and the boat did not capsize, though it rocked violently and Giroie and another man were thrown clear into the water. He threw his arms over the side of the boat and bore down. Panic and the rush of the soldiers to arms did the rest. The boat tipped towards him, four warriors splashing in around him, crying out to Mary and St Etienne. He had his arms around one’s neck and, in a quick twist, he had broken it. In the confusion and the darkness the soldiers drew their weapons. He dragged another man down. His friend came to his aid, hacking into the water with his sword but striking only Norman flesh. Blood was all around Loys, the smell, the taste, as sweet as another sip of wine to the three-cup drunk. He stood, driving the heel of his fist into the swordsman’s temple. Not to tear, not to rip, not to sink his claws into his own humanity.
‘Foreigner!’ Giroie called out from the other side of the boat.
‘He’s here, lord, here!’ Another warrior was backing away, the water around his waist, his sword in front of him shaking like a branch in the wind. His fear hit Loys like a waft from a baker’s oven.
‘I can’t see you, Philip!’
‘Here, here.’
Loys struck, dashing the
sword aside, going for the throat. The warrior drew his knife but Loys snapped his arm, the knife snagging the warrior’s thigh, which burst to the surface with a deep meaty enticement of blood. It was as if he stood on the edge of a great precipice, ready to cast himself down. No Loys, no. His fingers itched at the man’s neck, his lips drew back from his teeth and a snarl rattled in his throat. What of her? He could protect her from the Normans but not from himself. He threw his man back into the water. The warrior turned on to his hands and knees, hacking like a sick dog.
The smell of the blood called forward the wolf, slinking and hungry in his mind. Kill, eat and kill. Kill again.
‘Philip, are you there?’ Giroie spoke.
The panic was ripe and slaversome. Words split and disintegrated in Loys’s mind. Instinct told him his eyes saw what Grioie’s did not. It was flat dark for a man. Not for a wolf.
The girl cried out on the bank, her voice bringing him back to himself.
‘Leave me, Giroie. I give you your life if you flee now,’said Loys.
‘There are ten of us and one of you!’
‘Not so many now, and that tells me you cannot see me. Know that I am the possessor of a great magic.’
‘It didn’t save you when we tied you by the river. Andrew, Robert, Pierre!’
No reply, just the gasps of the man Loys had strangled.
Loys peered through the darkness and mist. There was Giroie. The water was only up to his thighs and he cast around him, looking for enemies.
It could end here. The pursuit need go no further. Rage bubbled up inside Loys like a boiling spring. The girl cried out again. If he killed, could he stop killing? Could he snap a neck, tear a throat and not lick the jewels of blood from his fingers? More precious than gold, blood was transformative. Even the smell of it seemed to feed his muscles, opening new voids of hunger inside him.
‘I’ll kill you, foreigner!’shouted Giroie.
Loys was on him, driving him backwards into the water, holding him down. Kill and rejoice, kill, hunt. No difference. What is killing if not hunting, what is hunting if not eating? The thoughts would not separate. To hunt was to kill was to eat. Giroie clawed at Loys’s face as he tried to drown him, cried out as Loys bit him, severing a finger. The blood burst in Loys’s mouth, a warm frenzy trickling into his throat, exulting him, lifting him up, making the night crackle with sounds, heartbeats, breath, the shivering of limbs, the music and percussion of murder.
The woman cried out for a third time. Loys spat out the finger. Death, not to be its servant, but to make it serve. Loys threw Giroie down, turned back to the bank.
‘I can’t see him! I can’t see him!’ The one remaining warrior was shouting out.
Loys made the bank.
‘Follow me and die!’ he said.
He went to find the woman, spitting the savour of blood from his mouth.
34 Mortal
‘What are these things, mistress?’
‘These are the runes. They are the magic of the gods. They make the gods.’
‘Then use them to get us away from here. Let us go to a place which is warm. I have one inside me. It is tangled with the ones you showed me at the Galata bridge.’
‘I have no runes. They are gone.’
‘Lady, they are here. Can you not see them? Here is one that breathes like a horse and another that sighs like a mountain wind.’
‘They are gone.’
Freydis looked down the hill. There was a commotion by the river. She couldn’t see much through the gloom but men were calling out, splashing; launching a boat, by the sound of it.
‘There may be a distraction, we can get away. Use your magic to hide us.’
‘I have no magic.’
‘If only we had a horse. They might mistake us in this night and we might get away.’
At the word ‘horse’, the rune that shone bronze like the back of a bay mare stamped and blew. Answering it, from up near the intact houses, a chorus of neighing and whinnying. Voices raised to quiet them.
‘There are others. In the church,’ said Freydis. ‘Other runes are in the church.’
‘You have taken my magic at the well, or it has been given to you,’ said Styliane. ‘We must go. The runes will want to unite. Then you or whoever bears them will be nearer to being a god. The cycle will start again.’
‘What cycle?’
‘Birth and death, forever. I do not want to die, Freydis, I fear it.’
‘You will not.’
‘We must find the girl Tola. If she kills Loys then we are all lost. The god exists in opposition to the wolf. While the wolf lives then the god is needed and might be reborn. If he dies, the runes are gone from the earth. You die. I die.’
Freydis looked up at the shining symbols in wonder.
‘But without these you die anyway?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what shall we do?’
‘It is right you die for me, as my servant,’ said Styliane. ‘But we must walk a perilous path. When the god dies on earth, the runes will scatter. It happened before and it could happen again. Then, at the right place, I might receive my magic back.’
‘The god is already dead.’
‘So he must be reborn. In you and with whoever has the runes in that church. You must come together and the wolf must tear you.’
‘I am ready to face a thousand wolves for you.’
‘Good. But first, we must kill the girl. If we can do that, then the wolf is safe.’
‘And then?’
‘The story will unfold as I have striven to prevent it unfolding all these years.’
‘But if the god gives his sacrifice to fate, will not the cycle begin again?’
‘I will reclaim my magic. From there I can plan.’
‘I fear these symbols.’
‘You are right to. They are keys to knowledge and to madness. The god Odin boiled his brains when he took them from the well.’
‘Then let us find her. How?
‘Think where fear is. Think where you do not want to go.’
Freydis thought. The night was alive to her. Even in the frost she felt creatures, burrowed beneath the earth, their slow breath, their still bodies, waiting for spring. She felt the seeds of the fields, the bulbs of the flowers sleeping, and she felt fear. On the horizon something did not sleep but stirred and swirled like a river whirlpool. Some strange nothing, a negation, a darkness folded in darkness lay beyond the horizon.
‘You feel him.’
‘As I did before. It was my instinct to follow him.’
‘No instinct. The runes have a will. It is hard to know it from your own.’
Shouts from the church. A crash. She wondered that the men of the halls did not come to investigate but it was cold and a fight in a camp was no unusual thing.
‘How will we travel?’
As if in reply, a horse whickered away by the city gate.
‘I will get us a horse,’ said Freydis, ‘I will kill the guards and be gone.’
‘The runes you have are not runes of death.’
‘I have the spear rune but I will not touch it, nor call it to my mind. I don’t have your strength, lady, and I feel the runes pulling me to madness. For you, I need to be clearheaded. I will kill them as I’ve always killed, then we will take their horse and be gone.
The men on the boat splashed out into the night. Freydis wondered what could be urgent enough to make them set off in this blackness. She kept the runes quiet inside her now, taking Styliane by the hand and creeping down towards the water.
Behind her something stirred and rustled like the wind in the trees. The runes she had sensed in the church. She felt the ones in her keening for them. No time to think of those now. She steeled herself and made the water, tracing it along in the direction she guessed the b
ridge would be. She was right.
Over the slick logs and out towards the gate.
She gestured for Styliane to stay, then crept forwards. The horse was fretting at the gate and the man was trying to calm it. She took out her knife. No way to hurry this, better a slow, silent approach than quicker and raise the alarm. She made the wall and rested. A few breaths and she sidled along towards the gate. The fire at the gate was enticing but she could not stop to enjoy its warmth. Three men there. How quick could she be? Very quick.
She was close enough to hear the men breathing. The spear rune quivered in her mind, begging to be used. Let it. She saw it as a white shaft against the black sky. One man died immediately, his head half severed as her sword stuck, though she lost it as he fell down. She did the other with her knife, driving it up under his chin into the root of his tongue, leaving him to drown silently in his own blood. The third ran and shouted. It was too much of a luxury to chase him.
‘Lady!’
Styliane came running.
Freydis freed the horse, tightened its saddle and nearly threw Styliane up onto the big war saddle before jumping up herself. There was no real room in the saddle, so she stood up in the stirrups, spurring the horse away into the night. She heard the man hallooing back into the town behind her but she heard no answer. The town was silent.
She didn’t know which way she rode – just away; the night was clear to her by the rune light but she wished it wasn’t, she wished she could damp down the magic that was lighting inside her, filling her with elation. Or was it just her love for Styliane? When they were clear of the town, she would lead the lady on the horse and she would walk. She saw herself strolling with the lady through a green landscape, spring warm about her and she did not know if that was a glimpse of the future, born of magic, or just a wish for what might be.
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