Part 27 (1/2)

'Sleep if you like. I'll watch these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' said Bragi.

So Vali slept, or rather hovered uncomfortably between waking and sleeping.

The sea fell to a dead calm and the boat went on under oar for a while. In his semi-conscious condition the rhythm of the rowing seemed like something animal, a heartbeat. His mind seemed to enter the beat, to be taken over by it, and then the cadence seemed to change subtly. It was no longer so slow and easy, but faster and more frenzied. He began to dream - or so he thought - and he saw Adisla and Feileg and that strange rune. It seemed to pulse and move, to vibrate and thump, and he realised it wasn't the oars at all that were making the noise, but the rune. And it was not floating and incorporeal, as he had thought it to be, but was real, painted onto a surface. He breathed in and smelled hide and wood - a fire. The rune was shaking. It was painted on a drum. Someone was beating a drum with that horrid symbol on it. He looked through the rune and he saw Adisla - but where was she? She was at the centre of a circle of wild animals: wolves, bears, stags, even a huge eagle. But then his mind cleared and he saw them for what they were - men in animal masks. They were beating drums, drums peppered with that rune, which seemed to lift from the skins as they beat them, to go floating up through the night. He knew where they were going - towards him. They seemed to sweep over him, enveloping him in a swarm. He had the sense that the men were showing him that they had her. They were calling him, even laying a trail for him to follow. There was another thing there though, something old and hungry, something that prowled at the edge of his mind, watching. Its presence seemed like a blind shaft, a drop away into nothing, and the cold he felt from it was the same cold he had felt when Disa had worked her magic on him.

The drumbeat filled up his mind.

When he turned he saw the man he had seen at the s.h.i.+eld wall, tall and pale with a shock of red hair.

'Help me find her,' said Vali.

'You will find her,' he said, 'and you will be lost. Welcome the sorcerer's gift. Your anger is now a gate for him and he can hear it opening. Let these little ones in.'

He had picked up a fistful of those spiky runes and sprinkled them over Vali's head.

'What does the drummer want from me?'

'For you to know yourself.'

'Who am I?'

The man held Vali in his arms and kissed him on the forehead.

'Would you know?'

'I would know.'

'Then know.'

He was drowning again, the filthy water obscuring his sight, filling his lungs and choking his consciousness. The drums were thumping in his head and, above them, he heard Jodis telling them to put him under. He saw himself in that chamber where the rune had been, knowing that it expressed himself, Adisla and Feileg, knowing they were inseparable. He realised what he had missed before - he hadn't seen where he was watching from. He felt a pain in his mouth like a pin, felt tight bonds about him, smelled blood and fire and felt an anger of injustice boiling within him.

He tried to speak his name, but all that came out was a howl of agony, a roar of injustice. He was the wolf.

'Get up. This is our chance. In the name of Thor's bulging nut sack, get up. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you?' It was Bragi's voice, shouting, urgent. Vali could also hear screams - men hurling obscenities and threats.

He stood. Something bizarre was happening. The merchant Veles came flapping past him, waving his arms almost as if he was swimming through the air. Then, with an unexpected turn of athleticism, he pulled himself up by one of the ropes that was securing the big barrels and leapt inside, quick as a rabbit into a hole.

Vali looked around. A huge full moon turned the sea to crumpled metal, and no more than bowshot away was a broad bank of thick fog almost glowing in the moonlight. There came the sound of rain - or something like it - and everyone scrambled for cover, cowering beneath s.h.i.+elds or ducking under the longs.h.i.+p's rail.

He looked off to the side. Two drakkars, the real deal with carved dragons' heads, were upon them, showering their s.h.i.+p with thick black volleys of arrows. Where had they come from?

'Haarik! Haarik!' came the chant.

They were raiders from Aggersborg. If Haarik was on board then Vali wanted his blood.

There was a sh.o.r.e in sight under the bright moon. They had blundered too close to Haarik's land and were paying the price. Still, Vali would welcome being captured by Haarik - in a way. It would put him closer to Adisla. Logic though wasn't uppermost in his mind. Something else was gnawing away at him. What had the man in the feather cloak said to him? He couldn't think. His head was still resonating to the sound of those drums. Then all reason seemed to desert him. These attackers were the kin of the men who had stolen Adisla, killed little Manni, uprooted him from his home and the people he called family. Vali coughed. It was the same cough he'd had in the mire. His throat felt dry and tight, his head light, his ears seemed full of a throbbing beat. He couldn't order his thoughts, couldn't find direction.

'Danes, Danes, Haarik's men, thieves and murderers to be torn and wasted. Kill them. Kill them all. None alive, none alive. My oath is murder to them. I tear and bite, bite and tear.'

What was happening to him? Now he was shaking and coughing. Now he was freezing cold, just as he had been when Bragi had dragged him from the water of the drowning pool.

'Pirates! Prince, it's now or never. We should bargain with them. This is our freedom!' It was Bragi, but Vali couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. His head was spinning. It was as if the reality he had experienced in his dream, the reality of the dark waters, had replaced that of the attack.

Some archers in Vali's boat were returning fire although most of Bjarki's men were still struggling to free their weapons from sea barrels. Vali seemed to move through a soup of stress and anger, as if the men leaked these things from them in their sweat.

A drakkar came swiping past, its oars withdrawn, to broadside their own, snapping off oars and sending men tumbling to the bottom of the boat. Only three men were left standing - himself, Feileg and Bodvar Bjarki, who was grinning and laughing behind his huge s.h.i.+eld, a fine sword in his hand.

Grappling hooks came into the s.h.i.+p. The war jabber was in his ears, the stink of fear all around him. He felt as if the rune was hooked through his throat, pulling him up towards a terrible destiny. His blood pumped in his head like something was trying to burst from inside him. And then it did - a word that seemed more than a word, more like a vortex, a sucking piece of the night into which he would abandon himself.

'Fenrisulfr.'

It felt right, as if for the first time he was saying his name.

'They tied me as they tied my father,' he heard himself say.

'What are you talking about? We need to get to that s.h.i.+p.' It was Bragi.

'I will lap their vital ichors.'

'Prince, you're raving. At least lie down. You're going to be hit.'

'Fenrisulfr.'

Vali stepped towards the bouquet of the fight. It all seemed so delicious to him: the heavy sweats of fear and rage, and the blood, above all the blood, where the sweet arrow did its work, where the lovely sword cut and the pretty axe hewed.

'The fetters have burst,' he said.

And then the blood mire took his mind.

35 A Wolf's Treat.

Vali woke. He was in fog. It was day and the mast cast long shadows into the air like the rays of the sun coming behind a cloud, but streaking the fog with darkness not light. The rays floated before him, a black web on grey, almost as if the creaks of the s.h.i.+p that broke the damp silence had been given visible expression.

He looked down at his clothes, or what was left of them. They were torn and dark with blood. There was a taste in his mouth - blood too. He felt torpid and slow-witted, as you might after a heavy meal in the afternoon sun.

'Bragi?' No answer. He had his hand on something soft. He looked to see what it was and screamed. It was a man, his ribcage torn away, his limbs broken, staring up from beneath him. Vali jumped to his feet. There was someone beside him. He started and was about to leap back, but there was no need. It was just his own shadow, a fog spectre cast by the sun, eerily solid. He looked about him. The boat was full of corpses ripped and mutilated in the most horrible way. Dead eyes stared at him; limbs reached for him; entrails snaked at his feet; the smell of death filled up his nostrils.

He staggered around, trying to get away from the dead men, but they were everywhere, from stern to prow. He ran in a crazy dance, lifting his knees high as if attempting to float above the corpses. He felt a hand clutch at his shoulder and he turned to see the wolfman looking back at him. Feileg was gaunt and pale, and a long deep cut ran from the top of his arm across his chest. Vali took a step back, tripped over a body and fell onto it. Repulsed, he tried to stand. The wolfman grasped him and pulled him to his feet.

'How long?' said Vali.

'A week,' said the wolfman.

'I've been unconscious a week?'