Two blades rose. Two blades skittered away across the flagstones of the rough road. Two screams pierced the afternoon air. Two heads rolled across the road, pumping blood.
Gulls screeched and dark birds, with bright yellow beaks, flew and wheeled above him, screaming their anger at the peacefulness of the early autumn afternoon’s having been so bitterly disturbed.
Beneath the wheeling flock of angry blackbirds, running away from the gentle waters of the fjord where the long ship shifted from side to side as the tide rose, Harald – the Berserker – burst into the nearest hall, cut down the man who stood there feebly trying to protect his wife and two young sons.
Blood dripped from the singing blade as Harald ran to the screaming trio and viciously slit the belly of the tallest and ablest of the sons. The mother dropped across the boy and the Berserker’s sword was like a scythe as it cut the woman’s head from her white shoulders in a single sweep.
The youngest boy yelled hysterically and sobbed, waiting for his end.
Harald grabbed him by his cloth shirt and held him tight against the buckling turf walls of the house, pushing the point of his sword against his belly.
‘Why?’ he cried. ‘Why attack?’
The boy screeched and tears flooded from his eyes. A moment later he seemed to see something behind Harald, and Harald moved his head to look back towards the door.
A short-handled axe sliced through the air beside his head, smashing into the youngster’s skull, splitting it in two between his eyes.
Harald dropped the corpse and swung around, staring through the redness at the old man who stood there, a bow drawn and the long arrow aimed directly at the Berserker’s head.
The bear dropped back, the rage subsiding, amused, perhaps, to see how the emerging human would handle the situation. Harald, terribly angry, and still shaken with the suddenness of the Berserk possession, walked towards the other man.
‘You killed the boy!’
‘Better he should die,’ said the man, allowing himself a quick glance at the oozing bodies beside him, ‘Than that he should live to remember this.’
‘I came here quietly, peacefully. All I wanted was food, a horse. I would have left. I would have left! Why was I attacked?’
‘You need to ask after what you’ve done?’
Harald screamed with fury and frustration, but – making no move – did not solicit the release of the arrow.
‘I came in peace!’ he cried. ‘They attacked me. What could I do?’
‘You could have run.’
‘I am possessed, you fool. A Berserk possesses me! I couldn’t run. But I would not have killed …’
The old man lowered the bow, stared at Harald for a moment, then let his gaze linger on the dead woman.
‘Did they attack you?’
Harald said nothing, felt the rolling laughter of the bear and the rising sickness in his throat. His human senses found the stench of blood, and the spilled excreta of the youth he had disembowelled, so repulsive that he wanted to run from the hall, to run and never stop running and screaming until the earth closed over his head.
The old man, white-haired and clad in the flowing robe of a shaman, met the Berserker’s gaze evenly.
‘There is a curse on you that you cannot shake, and which normal men cannot comprehend.’
‘A truly terrifying curse,’ agreed Harald, his attention half on the old man’s dark eyes, half on the still taut bow with its arrow aimed at his belly. ‘And I arrived here for a moment only. I’m heading into the mountains in search of a cure for that curse. I cannot control the violence of my actions, and I live in mortal fear of the scent of slaughter, or the anger of impetuous youths. They make me mad, and the redness takes me, the bear … oh Thor! The bear … to be rid of it! What wouldn’t I give!’
The old man was silent for a moment, then said, ‘We have been expecting Berserks for several days. A group of them feasts and savages at Ondheim, two days’ ride south of here. We have been expecting them and we will fight them when they come. We thought you were one of them. We were obviously wrong.’
‘I am nevertheless one of them,’ said Harald. ‘And slaughter is my trade, my great lust when the bear rules me. I cannot help myself.’
Old man and youth stared at each other searchingly for a long moment, then the bow was lowered completely, the tension of the string relaxed.
‘Do they seek you, these Berserks?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harald. ‘A group of six, led by a giant man called Beartooth, will certainly be searching for me, but whether or not this is the same group I can’t say. They crossed the ocean a day ahead of me, but I may have arrived before them.’
The old man was thinking hard. ‘These are six in a band, we have been told. The leader wears a necklace of bear’s teeth and is called Beartooth.’
‘Then they are the same, and they seek me.’
‘To kill you?’
‘Almost certainly.’
The old man fell silent, staring at Harald, and shaking his head. ‘Despite what you have done here, I feel great pity for you. All mortal men hate you, and even those who are like you desire your death.’
‘Don’t pity me,’ said Harald urgently. ‘Just give me food and water, and a horse, then let me go on my quest before Beartooth arrives. And take your village and hide, because Beartooth is a frightening man who doesn’t even wait for the Berserker rage to take him before he lets his sword eat at hearts and brains. Help me and help yourselves, and one day we may be able to raise a horn together under more pleasant circumstances.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the old man quietly; the fire of confusion flickered brightly in his eyes. Six of his townspeople had been cut down, but he himself had been responsible for the death of one, seeing death as a release from some agony to come. When he looked at the Berserker he perhaps saw a more compulsive instinct to kill, as unreasoned as his own action, but equally unavoidable.
‘There will be great suffering here,’ said the old man after a moment. ‘I sense it and the birds, by the way they fly and the way they talk, have told me I sense correctly.’
Harald sheathed his obtrusively bloody sword, and walked down the hall to stand in the broken doorway, staring across the sparsely green hills up to the ridges where soon the dark and irresistible shapes of the six Berserks who pursued him might appear.
The old man, bow still held in his hand with the arrow notched and ready, followed his gaze.
‘Forty years ago a jarl called Asjorn used this port to gather his forces. Twenty long ships nestled in the harbour, and four hundred battle-hungry men camped around the town. Their cries and practices struck fear into every woman and child in town, and not a man who was bonded to a woman in love and honour expected to live to see her retain that honour. Four hundred men, preparing to go a-viking and yet not one of them lifted a finger to assault one of us, nor did they enter the area of the village except when they embarked.’ His eyes, filled with pain, stared up at Harald. ‘The six men who approach us strike more fear into my heart than four hundred thousand raiders.’
‘Then hide,’ said Harald. ‘Go into the hills and take tents and food and wait until they have passed.’
The old man shook his head, his white hair rippling in the cool wind blowing off the fjord. ‘Wherever we run, the Berserks will come; this is what the birds have told me, and this is what I dreamed. So we shall wait and take what we must.’
‘Defence is useless,’ said Harald pointedly.
‘Our defences lie dead, cut down with two swift strokes. They were the only strong-armed men left in the village after the attraction of the Celtish campaigns. And those forty men might not be back for months.’
Harald felt a chill pass through him. Should he tell this sad old man that those forty villagers would not be back at all, that the crabs fed off their bones, which were strewn along the shore near the ancient lands of the spirit warriors whom they had insulted by their arrogance?
He d
ecided against it.
‘May Thor protect you,’ was all he said.
‘May Odin be calm,’ murmured the old man. Tears sparkled in his eyes. ‘May he be calm and peaceful, and ride his puppets through our village and into the hills.’
‘Hide the corpses, and disguise the smell of blood with the stink of animal droppings, and you may find your wish granted.’
Harald drew the dirk from his belt and held it before him, staring deeply into the snow-capped mountains it showed, and the deep, rock-strewn passes, with the hardy pines clinging desperately to slopes almost too sheer for a man to climb. The sun shone dully from behind one of the peaks, giving Harald an instinctive feel for the direction of the valley that was central to the view.
He showed the knife to the old man. ‘Do you recognise this pass?’
The old man stared into the bronze blade for a long moment, then slowly shook his head. ‘Not the pass,’ he said, ‘nor the mountains. But the river … the bronze river …’
‘The river seems bronze because of the metal of the knife,’ laughed Harald.
The old man shook his head. ‘When I was an impulsive youngster, a dreng by anybody’s standards, with several friends I rode hard and high into the deserted lands around the black rock gate that stands some four days’ ride inland, guarded by the spirits of the original builders. We were not allowed to pass through the great gate, but we bathed in the water that flowed between the great monoliths that were the sides of the portal guarding the strange lands beyond. The water was bronze, flowing like liquid metal from high in the mountains. A bronze river. I think you could do worse than follow that same route. This dirk is of an age before that of man, as is the gate, as is the water, as is the warlock that you seek, for if you journey into the Blackskull mountains that lie beyond that gate then you are certainly seeking the Keeper.’
Harald didn’t know the name of the wizard he sought, so he merely shook his head. Gotthelm had never mentioned a name, merely that he had saved the man from death at the claws of a ferocious bear.
But now Harald had a definite idea of where to begin his search.
The old man told him briefly and explicitly where to journey, then led Harald to a small stable where three stallions browsed on small bales of hay. Harald chose one and led the beast out into the daylight where he strapped and buckled a simple saddle across the animal’s powerful back and swung up on to the horse to let the creature get used to the feel of its new master.
The old man brought food and water, and with a last salute and an anxious glance to the southern skyline, Harald spurred his horse forward and raced from the village.
He stopped, suddenly, and turned round, staring at the watching man. ‘If I ever find release,’ he cried, ‘I shall return and answer for what I have done here.’
The old man’s only acknowledgement was a slight bowing of the head.
At the top of the first rise Harald stopped and looked back again.
In the bay his long ship was burning, and a small gathering of townspeople were watching with fascination. The black smoke rising into the windy air would have been a beacon for fifty miles to any wandering Berserker, and that boded ill for the gentle village.
He rode along the base of tall cliffs, seeking a way out of the lower lands of the ocean shore, and into the colder world of scattered farms and distant mountains. Then he slept in the shelter of a rock overhang. He awoke during the night as something cried to him in his dreams, and sat there, staring into the pitch blackness, seeking even a solitary star beyond the dark veil of cloud; but the winter storms were too close and the land was closed off from light, and not even the glow of a distant fire could relieve the sombreness of that absolute black.
It came again, the haunting cry, the howling of a wolf, but distant, very distant. It came from where he had been, miles to the west, against the shores of the fjord. Had the wolf circuited the deep fjord so quickly, then? Had it followed his smell on the wind to the small village and found him gone?
A third time the wolf howled. Harald imagined he could hear his name in the hair-raising cry of the great beast as it raised muzzle to sky and let its voice carry as far as the wind would take it, upwards, towards him.
At dawn, covered in thick frost, frozen and hungry, Harald rose and stared about him.
The ground dropped away behind him in a steep slope that rose into low hill after low hill, sparsely covered with straight, bare pines. Although it was cloudy, in the extreme distance, he could see the gleam of the fjord he had left and a thin column of dark smoke rising into the air. Perhaps the smouldering remains of the ship; perhaps the remains of the village itself.
The cliff behind him was sheer and dark, and above him roots and grasses dangled and blew in the wind.
A vile smell tickled his senses and he again searched the lowlands over which he had ridden.
His heart stopped for a moment, then raced with fear, with panic, with excitement. Beartooth was riding across a ridge and his five Berserker brothers were close behind. Three or four hours’ ride away; no more, certainly.
They had found him with horrifying swiftness, and Harald had no doubt at all that the old man in the village had been induced to tell of Harald’s quest by the most offensive of means.
Harald climbed back into the saddle and urged his steed along the cliffs. The dark rock, the darkness of horse and his own clothing, might have lent a certain invisibility to him, but he was not counting on Beartooth’s eagle eyes being deceived for very long.
At last he found the way up through the cliffs – a steep gully, filled with loose stones and rocks across which he led his horse, which slipped and snorted with the effort of the assent.
They arrived above the cliffs and, without even a glance backwards, Harald rode hard across the jagged land he found there.
Ahead of him, far distant, towering into the billowing clouds, were the dark shadows of mountains, and they filled Harald with unease and yet a certain joy. As a youth, even as a man, he would never have dared to ride so arrogantly into those mountains, for fear of the wrath of the creatures and strange men who lived among them, and for fear that his destiny might be altered by supernatural forces.
Now he rode towards them. Only when he felt his steed sag with weariness did he stop for rest.
Thus he covered vast tracts of land, and by the end of the day he had come further than a normal ride of two days would have taken him.
In the stillness of the night creatures moved about him, eyes dull in the darkness, breath foul as they peered closely at the tense Berserker who gripped his sword in his hand ready to strike the moment one of the inquisitive night walkers came too close. A nomadic band, they passed onwards into the darkness, moving, perhaps, to some rocky crag a few days’ walk to the south where they might winter in crannies and caves until the bitter snows of the coldest season made their natural home among the tallest peaks a more comfortable place to return to.
By day he rode through thick woodlands, weaving between the pines and darting from sunlit glade to sunlit glade. He was conscious of the watchers of the wood regarding him, following him curiously but discreetly, unwilling to attack because of the sense of power he radiated. The bear’s ferocity perpetually surfaced as a body odour detectable by animals if not by men; the sudden growl of the bear was uttered as he slept in the saddle and the bear prowled forward to see if there was blood on the wind.
The woodlands were left behind and he rode higher into the hills, along razor-backed ridges and across thin, ice-cold streams of glittering water at which he refreshed himself and tried to wash the blood from his sword. But the blood was too caked, and the smell of it, and the stink of the bear, remained about him, a tangible cloak of menace.
He rode even after the light of day had fled into the west, and only when his horse stumbled, several hours after darkness had descended, did he stop and contemplate the third night asleep in this barren land.
A bird shrieked above his head, wings cu
tting the stillness in a dull and familiar beat. For a moment he searched the heavens for a glittering pair of eyes, and his heart stuttered with youthful expectation. Deirdre … Deirdre … his mind spoke the name over and over, his eyes wide while he scanned the rolling night clouds.
She would be far and away above him by now, among the Sky Riders and their starry kingdom, seeking her own man, her love of centuries before. But for a moment it amused and thrilled him to imagine that she was with him, watching him, ready to cast a simple spell for his protection.
The bird vanished, screeching away into the dimness, and Harald turned back to regard the invisible lands ahead of him.
Water rushed, noisily. He eased the horse towards the babbling stream, and allowed the steed to drink.
The horse backed off and Harald, puzzled, dismounted and tasted the water himself. It was unusually bitter, but tasted unpoisoned. He slaked his own thirst, then left the horse by the stream to drink if it wanted to, or not if it sensed some unpleasant metal in the water and disdained to partake of the icy refreshment.
Harald rolled in a tight ball and slept by the water’s edge. In the morning he awoke from a violent and bloody nightmare, rolling into the cold stream and splashing noisily about, screaming his shock.
He laughed as he realised what had happened, and scrambled up the bank, shaking his head to get rid of as much water as he could. Then he looked back at the stream.
‘Thor’s Spit!’ he cried, delightedly, jumping to his feet and running again into the bitter water. His face broke into a huge grin and he astounded the steed that watched him, by dancing in the stream and splashing the fluid all over him, and laughing and kicking and finally emerging on to dry land, shivering and giggling and stripping off his clothes to dry.
Naked he again stared at the shallow river, but this time he peered up along its winding length to where it vanished among the hills and ridges, moving as an arrow into the mountains, towards the pass that he sought.
The bronze river!
Icy, bitter to the taste, but the most wondrous thing that Harald had ever seen. It wound away from him, and rushed in the other direction across the lowlands and then into some dark place in the ground where it bubbled on, beneath the rocks, away from the eyes of man, emerging into the sea at some unknown place along the steep cliffs of the northland shoreline.