Wolfsangel (38 page)
Authors: M. D. Lachlan
‘He’d be a fool then,’ said Gyrth, the Norse-speaking retainer who had been looking after them during their stay. ‘Veles is the best-connected merchant in the world. The tribute he pays the king buys many a byrnie and blade. And look! It’s Styrman the skald. Where did they get him from! Styrman! Hey, Styrman!’
A man disembarking waved his arm in the air. He was tall and thin, though with a drinker’s face, and he carried a lyre under his arm, not wrapped up at all. There, thought Vali, was someone who valued his reputation as a skald more than the health of the instrument that earned him a living. Every skald he had ever met had been showy like that. They almost had to be, in order to succeed in their profession.
‘Veles sent his best boat east for me,’ shouted the skald, ‘and demanded that I accompany his wine here.’
‘A story! A story!
‘Tonight,’ said the skald, ‘when the mead is drunk and we are drunker!’
The wine was heaved off the boat onto the foreshore and some men began rolling the barrels up towards the king’s hall while, from throughout the settlement, people came to see Styrman. Vali had seen skalds before and met a few popular ones, but this man seemed to have everyone’s attention. From the shouted requests of the crowd, he could see why.
‘Tell us of Ofeig the Hobbler and Ivar Horse Cock!’
A young man cried out, ‘We will beat you in flyting. No insult contest can you win, you who was raised so womanly!’ He was laughing but good-natured.
‘I am afraid of flyting with you, young fellow. Your balls have to drop sometime and, should they do so during the duel of jibes, the noise might put me off what I have to say. Clang!’
The crowd seemed to find this hilarious, much funnier than Vali thought it was. Still the skald was well liked, it seemed, and if he was an expert in flyting it would be interesting to hear him. People would come from miles around to test their wits against such a man. It was said that a good skald could best a hundred opponents in an evening’s drinking, each one dispatched with a different insult, usually in rhyme.
Vali looked out at the chain and then at the river beyond. The longing he felt inside didn’t even come to him as words, just as a sort of hunger, an ache in his stomach.
He had to find a way to get out. But even if he did escape from the settlement, Hemming would have no problem hunting him down. He would be stopped or killed by fearful farmers if he ran by land. By water the route was easier but still perilous - the best he could manage alone was a faering and even that would be difficult. It was some distance to the sea and the wind was uncertain. A drakkar would be on him before he reached the open ocean.
He walked back to the gloom of the house and sat down. There was no one there for a change, not even women. Everyone had gone outside to see the skald. He picked at some boiled meat in a bowl. And then he came to his answer.
The skald’s performance that evening would give him his chance. But escape was not enough; he needed to do something to stop himself being pursued. If the Danes thought he was dead, then they wouldn’t come after him. The wolfman was his double. He tapped a bone against the bowl and tried to think of a way around the path that had opened before him. He couldn’t. Vali would have to kill Feileg, dress him in his own clothes and then make off. It wouldn’t guarantee him escape - Hemming would certainly want to make a show of finding his guest’s killers - but the hunt would not be nearly so enthusiastic as if he was looking for Vali himself.
He worked out the details. He would need to get a Danish cloak to wrap himself in. The guards would be drunk or distracted by the skald and Vali thought he could just walk out. The wolfman could steal a cloak. When he returned to give it to Vali, he would kill him. Vali said the words in his mind, to fix himself in his purpose: ‘I will kill him.’ It was the best way, he knew. And yet that vision kept returning - the cave, the wolfman’s body bent into the shape of that strange rune, his own body, and that of Adisla, similarly contorted. He felt anxious. What would happen if he failed? The wolfman would kill him and Adisla would be alone.
Bragi had told him that his father Authun was famous for cold thinking - for seeing what needed to be done and doing it without regard to emotion or affection. Was it not rumoured that he had taken nine warriors with him to the mountain witches, knowing they would die? He had needed them so he had taken them. The wolfman was not Vali’s kinsman either, but an outlaw who had killed many men.
Vali had not been disarmed - that would have been a dishonour too far and an admission that the Danes feared him. He only had to remove his sword when he entered Hemming’s hall. He remembered the beach, the wolfman thrashing after him in the water, and thought that he should have let him drown. He couldn’t account for what had made him risk his own life saving him. Perhaps it was fate, saving the wolfman for the greater purpose of aiding his escape, Vali thought.
As the idea fixed itself in his mind, he found himself seeking justifications for what he was about to do. Feileg was dangerous. He had exposed them by his actions in the town. He drew attention to them wherever they went. On top of all that, he had some attraction for Adisla that unnerved Vali. Could he trust Feileg if they did find her? No. He’d seen the looks the wolfman gave him and could sense what Feileg felt towards him. Feileg wanted Vali dead but he needed him to find Adisla. As soon as that was done, Vali knew Feileg would attack him.
‘I am a wolf,’ the wolfman liked to say. So he needed to be treated like one.
Still, Vali didn’t relish what he had to do. It was, he told himself, simply his best chance. Would he include Bragi in the escape? Yes, of course. Whatever the wisdom of trying to make it alone, he couldn’t kill a kinsman or abandon one to die. He had set sail to find Adisla but he would have done the same for Bragi. He may have found the old man a bore, but he was a bore he was related to, and that solid fact removed all debate.
Vali drifted off to sleep, allowing the familiar aromas of the longhouse to take him back to his childhood at Disa’s hearth. He remembered Adisla and the warmth of her against him in the long winter evenings as they’d sat listening to the old stories of how the dwarfs made treasure for the gods, or of the never-ending battle fought by the war dead in the afterlife. There were other, better stories too - tales of farm life, of how Disa had tricked her husband into wiping his arse with a nettle in return for a beating he’d given her, of the funny things they’d said as children, of how the Rygir had suffered, fought and fled before marriage and trade had brought peace - or so they thought - to their lands. To find Adisla again, to have her sit by him as they listened to stories in the night, he would kill a thousand wolfmen, skin them and hang out their hides for the ravens to peck at.
All he needed to do was wait for darkness.
32 The Wine Road
The flyting was in full session and the skald was doing well. A huge jarl had shouted that Styrman was skinny, mean and too lazy to find his own food - at least Vali thought that was what he said. He could speak good Danish, his time with Barth the thrall had seen to that, but in the tumult of the hall he had difficulty picking some of the words out. He heard the skald’s reply as something like, ‘Food scarce. Lord Fastarr, none can eat but he. Esteemed lord keep cloak on as you pass the pigs, lest you be a birthing sow.’
The crowd roared, banging cups and knives on the table. Vali, though, could not find the contest funny. He glanced at Bragi. He had told the old man not to get drunk, but clearly Bragi had interpreted that as, ‘Don’t get very drunk indeed.’ He was guffawing into his beard and shouting, ‘He’s got you there, Fastarr! You asked for that one!’
‘How can you tell what they say?’ Vali asked Bragi.
‘I can’t get much of it, but you know it’s quality stuff from the skald - you only have to look at the fellow,’ said Bragi. He was enjoying, more than enjoying, wordplay in a language he hardly understood. Vali shook his head and returned to thinking about the business of the night.
The wolfman, Vali knew, was outside, sitting, as he always did in the evenings, down by the ramparts, staring into nothing. Feileg couldn’t stand the noise of the hall and in company retreated into long silences, hovering between animosity and something like fear. It was fear, Vali knew, of the unfamiliar. Vali looked around at the Danish nobles, the huge hall, the rich attire of the jarls, at their strange manners; he heard their weird ways of speaking. He was happier with ordinary people. Was he any different to Feileg? Yes, he was, because he would live to see the dawn tomorrow and Feileg would not.
Vali thought of the ships out on the water, symbols of the freedom he wanted. Even a rowing boat or Veles’ little delivery vessel would do.
He was ready. Everything had unfolded just as he had thought. The visit of the skald was such a big occasion that the longhouses lay empty. Only a single guard sat on the perimeter wall of the harbour by the chain and another at the gate. It was going to be easier than he had imagined.
Vali slipped out of the hall. It was late and the Danes had drunk their way through four of Veles’ big barrels, or at least they had been emptied. Vali knew very well that on such occasions people filled up whatever they could, and quite a lot of the wine would be transported in bottle and pan back to the longhouses to be consumed at a later date. The barrels had been upended and the ends prised off, people filling containers by dipping them in, tied to cords if necessary, to get the last out. The push to be first to the wine had been an unedifying spectacle.
He whistled to the wolfman, who turned and came towards him. Vali could sense his hatred, which was as strong as it had ever been. He was glad - it would make his task easier.
‘We go tonight and need cloaks,’ he said. ‘Take three from a longhouse.’ He had noted that everyone was in their best clothes for the visit of the skald. Their workaday stuff would be there for the taking.
‘I need no cloak in this weather.’
‘You do, for disguise. Go and get them.’
Soundlessly the wolfman moved away, more like something liquid than solid, flowing from shadow to shadow. Vali steeled himself while Feileg was gone. His sword was leaning against the outside of the king’s hall, along with Bragi’s. It would take too long to draw though. Vali had a short knife and thought he would do for Feileg with that as the wolfman put on his cloak. Then he would drag him to an animal pen, change their clothes, walk out of the settlement and steal a boat as soon as he could. His nervousness made him restless, and he went back inside the hall.
The skald was causing general hilarity with his flyting, and people were queuing up to try to best him, though no one had managed it so far. They were standing on the benches, clapping and yelling, toasting and cursing him, and everyone was seriously drunk.
Bragi, who was - incredibly - wearing his byrnie, was proffering a drinking horn to a slave girl who was trying to fill it from a jug. He was making her task much more difficult by pulling at her dress as she did so to get a look at her breasts.
‘Outside,’ said Vali. ‘Now.’
Even though he was mildly drunk, the old warrior caught the seriousness in Vali’s voice and followed him into the cool of the night. Vali took him to the shadows.
‘When Feileg comes back,’ he said, ‘I am going to kill him. It must be done quickly and it must be done without sound. The best place is in the shadow of the stable over there. It’s dark enough and any noise will not be heard from the hall. It is necessary and I’ll explain why once it is done.’
Bragi shrugged. ‘The outlaw was lucky to live so long anyway. Strike true. You’ll be a dead man if you don’t. I’ll be ready, whatever.’
‘Yes.’
They heard the skald shouting inside the hall.
Five tuns of wine sends the merchant Veles,Only five little tubs to fill our belliesLet us tell this stingy merchant, ‘Be cursed!’Ten fat barrels we’ll need to slake our thirst!
There was a tumult of applause and cheers inside the hall.
Feileg was back with three old cloaks in the light Danish style.
‘Over here away from the hall, and I’ll tell you the plan,’ said Vali.
They stepped towards the stable. Vali was very conscious of the knife in his belt. He would make Feileg do up the clasp on his cloak himself. The wolfman was unused to such things, and while his hands were occupied, Vali would stab him to the heart. Vali willed his fingers away from the knife, careful not to give his intentions away. That rune, that writhing, sinuous, shifting rune, was in his head again, but he dismissed it. They reached the lee of the building and Vali passed into the shadow. He was eager for Feileg to follow, eager for it to be over. But Feileg had stopped dead. He let out a low growl.
‘What?’ said Vali.
‘There is danger here,’ said Feileg. His teeth came back from his lips and he sniffed at the shadows.
‘There’s no danger. Come here,’ said Vali. He felt his heart pumping and his head light with nervousness.
‘I will not go there.’
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