The Reluctant Berserker (6 page)

He shifted inwards, gingerly, as though trying to get as much of himself as he could in contact with the hot stone. Leofgar didn’t like to see the way his old arms moved, jerking against his will, closing creakily slow, like a door whose leather hinges have stretched and left it gouging its way through the ground.

By the side of the salt pan, under a shallow shingled roof to keep it dry, a stack of peat waited to be burned. Leofgar brought out hairy, dirty bricks of the stuff and made a mattress of it in front of the fire. Anna accepted his help to struggle to his feet and limp the few paces from the wall to this makeshift bed. Supporting him, Leofgar could feel the effort it took him to kneel down again, to lie, straightening himself out on the dry and yielding surface. The fire shone on his face and warmed his chest and belly. Leofgar put the stone at his feet and tucked the pack with their clothes beneath his head to serve him for a pillow. He lay down behind and blanketed the old man’s back with his own scrawny body, wrapping their cloaks around them both.

The turf was soft beneath them and smelled of ancient heather and dust—long-ago vanished summers in a time of giants. He let his arm rest about Anna’s waist and felt the old man’s shivering slowly ebb as, in their swaddlings, it grew warm.
And I serve you
, he thought. Reluctantly—for it didn’t suit him to think himself bound by ties of obligation to anyone.

“There is no shame in serving a lord worthy of you,” Anna mumbled, his voice drowsy. “I do not know why you need to be told the things that are obvious to all.”

“Perhaps my mother was right.” Leofgar yawned, sleep circling him like a friendly dog, dark of pelt, calm of eye. “She said I was a changeling child, some elf’s get set in the place of a man—her own child spirited away to herd sheep for the folk of Frey. Perhaps that’s why I want folk to see that I am more than I seem to be. Because I am.”

Anna’s chuckle turned into a shallow, rasping cough. “Or perhaps it is just your monstrous pride.”

Leofgar laughed softly, though it hurt him sore to feel the coughs go on, shaking Anna’s ribs. He wouldn’t have known, had they not been pressed tight, for Anna made no noise at all to betray them.

“Perhaps it is.” And it was true, for he was a monster of pride to care for his own name and reputation more than he cared for his master’s comfort. The sheer ingratitude of his arguments struck him dumb. He owed Anna everything, and the old man should have everything he desired, if only the chance might come to give it to him.

With this decided, he allowed the hound of sleep to settle on him, breathing deep, weighing him down like a coverlet. As he slipped beneath its spell, he saw again the dark bulk that was the warrior with the worried eyes. There was one who had everything they both desired—the respect of every man, and a high and noble place in a good lord’s household. Yet it hadn’t seemed to be what he wanted.

Lust swam sinuous through his dreams like a snake in a stream as he felt again the thrill of power and astonishment that had gone through him when the other man—the deadly creature, sword skilled, hard handed, the maker of widows—had given everything up to his control. He saw it. Bullying boor that he was,
he
saw in Leofgar what Leofgar knew to be there, and he had given in to it with all the gladness of a new bride.

Perhaps it had not been the brightest of his ideas to humiliate the man in front of the entire village. The thought occurred—as these thoughts so often did—far too late. Made him groan and squeeze his eyes tight shut and hide his forehead against his master’s shoulder. Anna reached back and patted him consolingly on the hand, but it did very little to take away his regret, the feeling of a wonderful chance wantonly squandered. Monstrous pride, indeed.

By midwinter, freedom seemed not so sweet to Leofgar. The ground glittered as he slogged uphill towards the land of the Gyrwe, the cold of it striking up like shards of broken glass through his feet. Every step jarred aching limbs and joints, bloodied his heels in his hardened shoes and rang out, bell-like, as though the whole earth beneath him had turned to metal.

Snow heaped by the sides of the road. If it hadn’t been for the stakes hammered in by the path’s edges, he would not have known where it lay in the wide, white, featureless landscape. Ahead, a couple of trees stood out black as calligraphy against the parchment world, and in the fields they passed, the thin cattle already staggered, their hip bones sticking out like wings.

They had stayed at Watewelle for Christmas Day, and done what they could to repay warm food and lodging with songs of holy mirth. But even then Anna had been too weak to sing, and there had been very little of gratitude in Leofgar’s heart. Two weeks later, and the feast of twelfth night saw them here, swaying with exhaustion in the middle of nowhere.

The cold burned Leofgar from feet to knees, hands to elbows, his face gone past pain and into numbness. Still, he was the better of the two of them, for Anna no longer troubled to conceal his cough. Couldn’t have done if he’d tried—it now shook him like invisible hands, racking and tossing him. It began as a single hoarse cry and worked up until he was doubled over, gasping for breath, making inhuman whooping noises, while tears leaked from his eyes and blood ran from his lips.

They left a red trail in that white place, bright and festive as holly berries.

Leofgar would have wept too. Inside, the dammed tears grew into a deep lake that filled his dreams and made him feel as though he were drowning. Outside he simply tightened his arm around the old man and bared his teeth in a determined smile. “They said at Chidesbi that the lord of this land lived only a day’s journey away. Come now, it must only be a little further. Two or three more miles, and we’ll take it slow. Lean on me, and we’ll be there just in time to eat.”

Anna breathed out of his nose in what passed for a laugh for him now, but didn’t open his eyes. His face had changed so over the past months of deprivation that Leofgar sometimes woke in panic, certain he’d left his real master behind somewhere, and this one was an elvish abomination. Then he would study the old man and see where—beneath the marks of famine and chill—the same gaze looked back at him, tolerantly amused.

Shame dogged him as much as hunger. Where now was his gratitude for all Anna had taught him? What did it profit the old harper to have lavished his care on so useless an apprentice? One who could not even keep him warm? If he had only been more tractable, milder in temper, wiser in restraining his unruly emotions, they might have spent the winter in a new home, slowly blossoming beneath the care of a generous man with a warm house and a place by the fire for them both.

The path rolled into a hollow full of snow, and at each footfall they sank into it to their knees. Bitter, stinging cold soaked his hose and melting ice trickled into his boots, his softened, wet feet rubbing raw as he walked.

He thought of turning round, going back to Chidesbi, but they had made it clear their harvest had been poor and their stores were low. To try to winter there could bring death to them.

The short winter day was already going down in gloom, and the wind pierced them with a million needles of ice as it whispered past. Coughing, making harsh, barking, doglike noises, Anna pushed him away, fell to his knees and, slowly bowing forward, planted his forehead on the snow. “…can’t.”

Something snapped inside Leofgar’s head. Anger and desperation flooded him, and all at once he was hot. He grabbed his master’s arm and pulled, teeth clenched, until he had hauled the old man to his feet. Bending down, he got his shoulder into Anna’s stomach and lifted with all the strength in his back.

He felt the snow should melt before him. In the blast of his fury, it should whirl away and scatter and show him green grass. It should let him walk out into summer and wheat fields drowsing in the sun.

It did not, of course, but the strange fit carried him to the brow of the hill, and there—though the wind froze his breath to his lips—he saw, dark as crow wings in the distance, the ash and smoke of a fire on the empty sky.

Fury carried him almost all the way there, past workmen’s huts and a scattering of dwellings, past a moat and palisade crowned with silver-grey oak, past two gatehouses on either side of the track, from which the guards came running to lift Anna down and urge him to stop.

Their voices made piping noises in his ears, devoid of meaning or sense. He tried to wrest his limp master from their grasp and push on past. Only a few hundred yards away, past forge and bakehouse, weaving sheds and chapel, past the bower house and the stables, rose up a majestic hall. The smoke billowed out of its wind holes, and just the smell of it was warm.

With a berserk, desperate strength, he shouldered the guards aside—how dare they keep him from refuge? They were shouting now. He dodged open-handed blows, his ears ringing as he tried to walk on.

A man came out of the hall. He could not have been other than its lord—cloaked in wolf’s fur, gold at his belt and his throat, and his purple tunic stitched in wide bands of it. A tall, upright man with hair that gleamed as silver as a blade, and a wry wisdom in his leathery, lined face. His authority hit Leofgar at a hundred paces from his person. Poised at the edge of the spirit world as he was, Leofgar could almost see it—a penumbra of gold, as though he carried the sun inside his skin.

At a word from the man, the clutching hands of the guards fell. Leofgar was left alone, with Anna, unconscious, sagging from his arms. His harper’s eloquence deserted him, and he stood helpless as this glorious man unpinned his fur and swung it around Anna’s shoulders, wrapping and supporting him in one gesture.

“I am Tatwine,” he said, gently. “Lord of this place. I was only wishing for bards on this holy night. You are very well come. Now, let me see your master tended to, and let me take you in and seat you by the fire.”

At his nod, the guards picked Anna up between them and bore him into the warmth. Leofgar, with tears swimming in his cold eyes, stumbled after, and Tatwine steadied him all the way.

Leofgar didn’t know how long he sat by the fire, absorbed by the flare of the embers, while around him the life of the hall ebbed and flowed, and feeling returned slowly to his stinging hands and feet. He didn’t believe he had any thoughts at all during this time, but sat mute as a stone, pushed beyond his humanity by that final flare of strength.

Only when Tatwine returned and berated the cup bearers for not bringing him wine, tucked a strong hand under his elbow and lifted him without effort, did he stir out of his stupor. And that was to look up into the lord’s face without comprehension or thanks, stock-still and wordless.

Tatwine only smiled, and carefully took the snow-melt wet hat off Leofgar’s curls, surprising him by how much better it was without its clammy touch.

At last, Leofgar’s mind returned, bringing with it anxiety. “My master is…”

“Is abed. Come with me.”

Already Tatwine’s folk were setting out the tables for the evening feast, twining new branches of evergreens into the wilted Christmas boughs. From the bakehouse, a scent of spices floated into the compound and tingled the frosted air. The horses in their stable, beneath a good thatched roof and shielded from the wind by wickerwork screens, snorted companionably at Leofgar. A little haze of warm fog rose above them, smudging the evening’s sudden, terrible clarity.

For when he looked up, he saw that all the clouds had drawn apart. The night was on them full, and acres and acres of sharp stars were poised to fall on him with killing cold. The short journey out of the further gate, to a small thatched hut under the trees beyond, blasted out of him the small amount of warmth he had regained by the fire, and it came to him, slowly, that if he and Anna had had to sleep outside tonight, they would both have died.

Anna lay in the hut, looking withered and small in a bed heaped with blankets and a mattress stuffed to creaking with straw. He smiled as Leofgar came in, and his weary eyes were reassuring and kind. Leofgar circled the brazier of coals in the centre of the floor and sank to his knees at the bedside, lowering his forehead into Anna’s open hand. Behind him, the door closed and they were alone.

His tears dripped onto the old man’s fingers, making Anna shift over so that he could lay his other hand on Leofgar’s head, either in blessing or comfort. “I swear,” Leofgar said after a time, “this is where we stop for the winter. Everything I can do, anything I can do to make this man take us under his protection, I will do. I will not… I will not… I’m sorry.”

Cold fingers stirred his hair and rubbed his scalp soothingly. When he looked up, Anna’s expression was wry and fond but not hopeful, and Leofgar was shaken with a fierce determination to prove that he
could
do it. He could be pliant and helpful and courteous and meek, if his master’s comfort depended on it. He could. He would.

“Then…” Anna coughed softly and flailed for the cup set beside his bed, where horehound boiled in wine and honey sat steaming. A swallow stopped the cough as dramatically as a tripwire stops a galloping horse. “You should run over what you are to play tonight. That praise-song we wrote for Saebyrt of Ingenwic could be—”

“Altered for Tatwine,” Leofgar agreed, calling the lines to his mind, running through the places where the new name tripped up the old rhythm, replacing the lines that praised too-specific feats with well-worn kennings that could apply to any good lord. It took him only enough time for the burning coals to shift and settle once, and he said, “I have it,” drowsily, and snugged a little more firmly against the side of the bed.