Quiet as a wolf over snow, he sped towards him and struck.
Anyone Feileg had ever faced had been put down by his first attack, and Authun was no different. The king went sprawling to the floor with Feileg on top of him, but even as he hit Authun, Feileg knew he was in a fight. There was no fatal breath of shock for the king, no moment where he needed to work out what had happened to him and adjust. In an instant he had locked out the arm Feileg had put to his throat, driven into the elbow joint with the heel of his hand and forced the wolfman off him, twisting to stand as he did so. All that without sight.
If Feileg had been a less flexible man, Authun would have had him at his mercy, using his arm to pinion him through the shoulder to the floor. Instead, Feileg rolled away and broke Authun’s grip, but now the momentum of the fight had changed. Authun was standing, Feileg was on the floor, barrel-rolling away from him.
Feileg felt the king’s shin in his side as Authun kept pace with him. The warrior was keeping contact with him so as not to lose him in the dark. Feileg flipped back and heard the sword cut the air.
Feileg was now on his feet. The king’s byrnie jingled like a reindeer sled as he moved and told Feileg exactly where he was. The wolfman sprang again. The king could not see him but heard him exhale as he leaped. Authun crouched behind his shield to offer a smaller target and the wolfman went over his head, falling badly on the uneven floor.
There was a mournful sound from far away, like the mountain wind, though they were too far underground to be able to hear that.
All the air had been driven out of Feileg’s lungs by his fall, and Authun moved towards him, drawn by the sound of his panting.
The noise again. It couldn’t be wind, not here. And it sounded more animal. Authun struck into the darkness but his sword sparked on the floor. There was another flash. Saitada was trying desperately to light a candle. In the instant of light he saw the wolfman about to spring.
Feileg hit him again, but Authun blocked with his shield and bounced him aside. Authun could sense his man was tiring. He wished he had a shorter weapon than the Moonsword with him. If he let the wolfman close with him, he could finish him at close range with a knife.
The flint hit steel once more and Authun caught a glimpse of his opponent. It was enough. The Moonsword sliced out and caught the advancing Feileg across the thigh. The wolfman screamed as he crashed into Authun. The king battered him down with his shield. Feileg was howling, but a deeper sound stopped Authun dead - a rumbling snarl like a rock slide. It was a very large animal, probably a bear, and it was close. The noise distracted the king and the wolfman rolled away.
Feileg couldn’t stand - that much was clear to Authun, who could hear him dragging himself away in the dark. With another enemy so close, Authun couldn’t risk grubbing about to finish him off, but he knew men in battle could get up from terrible wounds and Feileg’s groans gave him away. However, the wounded wolfman was useful to the king. If there was a bear in the cave it would be drawn to the coughing and groaning man on the floor. Then Authun would know where both his opponents were.
Finally, Saitada had the candle lit.
The wolfman was trying to get up while behind him floated two points of green light. When Authun’s eyes adjusted, he felt himself shiver.
It was a wolf, but bigger than any wolf he had ever seen. It was bigger than any man, half again bigger than any white bear. How had it got into the caves? The tunnels were surely too narrow. The creature snapped its jaws and looked at him, coughing and hacking.
‘Fa . . . fath . . .’ If Authun had not known better he would have said the beast was trying to speak.
He made himself loosen his grip on the Moonsword, shook the tension from his limbs, breathed out and walked towards the wolf. To his right Authun noticed the wolfman crawling away. Let him go, he thought. He would be dead from loss of blood before long, and even if he survived wouldn’t be back to attack him any time soon. The fury that allows a man to forget mortal wounds is a short-lived thing, Authun knew.
Five paces from the creature he stopped. He was struck that its front right limb was more like a human arm than the foreleg of a wolf but most of all he noticed its teeth - each as big as a boat nail.
The king smiled. This was a rare death, he thought, one worthy of the tales of the skalds, but there was only the scarred woman there to witness it. He almost wished he hadn’t mortally wounded his previous opponent. His old friend Varrin would have loved to have died fighting such a monster, he thought. The face of the drowned man came into his mind again. He had killed him, and for what? What had been made by his ambition, what future secured, what treasures won?
The beast hacked and coughed again. Was it trying to speak? It didn’t matter. Authun had wanted death and here was his perfect enemy - the opponent who could not be pitied, the monster, the useful fiend who could be struck without compunction.
Authun raised the Moonsword. It was as if the animal caught his intent the instant it arose in the king. It snarled forward in a blur, knocking him to the floor. The byrnie saved his back on the rough stone but the wind was knocked from him.
Authun could not let that concern him.
Feileg bit down his agony and watched in the flickering candlelight as the king rolled away from the beast’s jaws, wriggling underneath it to slash up with his sword. The wolf was cut, its blood splashing onto Authun’s face.
The creature howled and leaped away from Authun but did not take long to recover. It charged again, but this time swiped at the king’s sword arm with its man-like arm. Authun had been ready to duck the charge but the attack on his weapon surprised him. He’d expect that from a man but not an animal. There was a clatter as the Moonsword went flashing across the cave. For the first time in his life Authun had been disarmed in battle.
Now the fight really started, the wolf driving into the king with tooth and claw, the king turning and ducking, dodging and jumping and - when that failed - catching the attacks on his shield.
Even through his pain Feileg had to admire the old warrior. Though empty-handed and fighting such an enemy, he didn’t lose his head. All the time, as he slipped past the creature’s attacks or rolled and twisted away, he was working his way towards where his sword lay. Feileg had to wonder why the warrior’s companion didn’t help him. The woman just sat in the candle glow, calm as if she was listening to a story by the fire.
The king was getting close to his sword. He was unharmed, though the animal had torn holes in his byrnie and ripped his shield to splinters. Feileg summoned his strength and crawled forward. The battle was almost on top of him, the old warrior crouching to feel for his sword. Feileg put his hand on the Moonsword, picked it up and dragged himself away into the shadows.
Authun did not pause; he simply readjusted his retreat, giving ground with each one of the wolf’s attacks, back towards the hoard of gold and the weapons that lay within it.
Feileg pulled himself to his feet and limped towards the nearest tunnel. Pushing himself along the wall of the passage he made his way into the darkness, the sounds of the fight fading in his ears. He felt his way down and down. The tunnel seemed endless but he couldn’t afford to rest. He drove himself on, away from the old warrior, away from the teeth of the wolf, and after some time had the sense that he was in a larger cave.
Then he heard something, a whimper. It was some distance away, and for a moment he dared to think it was Adisla. He ran his hand across the wall of the cave and limped on, clutching his wounded thigh with one hand, the Moonsword pressed under his other arm. The wall opened into another corridor. It was small, mercifully small, not much wider than a man. The beast would not be able to get down there. From below he heard the voice again.
‘Help me.’ His stomach leaped. It was Adisla.
He pushed himself on, the going terribly hard on the uneven floor.
‘Help me!’ The voice was louder now. Yes, no mistake, it was her.
Around a curve in the tunnel he could see a
light.
54 Tracking
The creature was hungry. The need to eat saturated his mind as the first light appeared like the nimbus of the sun from behind a rain cloud at the edge of the great slab that sealed him in. But he had not lost his animal caution and watched from the darkness to see what it was that had freed him. Wolves do not rush in until they know the odds, and the creature, who only had a weak notion of his invulnerability, wanted to see his opponents before striking.
But then they had come down into the pit and other beast feelings had taken over. If an animal stays somewhere long enough, it regards that place as its den. The creature felt threatened.
He heard words he didn’t really understand: ‘Let me go first. This treasure may be delicate and I should assess how best to move it.’
‘We are taking everything from this tomb, merchant. Do not make me leave your body in payment.’
There was no idea of revenge in the wolf’s brain as he snapped off Bodvar Bjarki’s head, only hunger.
There was only hunger too as he watched Veles trying in vain to climb the rope out of the pit. He closed on him, ripped open his back with a single bite, gulped down a gob of meat, pawed him to the floor and tore away the flesh from his belly, sucking on his sweet entrails as the merchant screamed.
Vali might have been pleased to see Veles suffer for what he had done to him, or might have thought that it was too strong a punishment for the crime he had committed, but he was scarcely there inside the wolf to have feelings either way. He was not one thing any more; he was a crowd, a mob, each of its members screaming for attention. The sorcerer, the Whale People, the family of reindeer hunters, the pirate Danes were all in him, or rather he was them, his consciousness a wild jumble of digested thoughts and personalities. His mind was like a marketplace, each bidder yabbering to stake his claim. Above them all though was the keening voice of the wolf, providing direction, impelling his body to action.
Panic flooded down from above. Men were scrambling to replace the great slab of rock that had sealed him in, but no one could shift it. They gave up and ran.
The wolf was out of the pit in a bound. There were things in his way, things that yelled and beat at him, so he swept them aside, cracked them in his jaws, allowed their juices and ichors to calm the hunger of his long incarceration.
When they were all dead, he lay down, heavy with what he had eaten, his brain torpid, his body growing as it put its meal to work under the frozen moon and the green fire skies of the winter’s unyielding dark.
He was not Vali. His body was like a twisted musical instrument and the prince was a tune it could play, but it did not then, nor for a while, not until he heard her cry the agonised howl that called him to life inside the beast.
In the lowest cave of the Troll Wall it appeared to Adisla that she lay on a wonderful bed of straw covered with luxurious furs. She was back in her house. Her mother was there and Barth the Dane, Manni and all her brothers. The calm that had come down upon her with the lady’s presence seemed like the snugness of her bed on a winter’s morning.
Adisla knew the witch queen wanted her to call Vali. Adisla spoke his name. The witch looked into her eyes and stroked her hair. She wanted Adisla to repeat the name, she could tell, and she did so gladly after all the lady’s kindnesses.
The witch queen looked down at Adisla and nodded to herself. She had been trying to work through the girl, to channel Adisla’s tender thoughts in order to send them to the wolf and summon him. That, it appeared, was not going to work.
Gullveig allowed the barbed rune to surface in her mind. It made her shiver. Its presence felt almost toxic, as if she held it too long it would burn her, destroy her even. Then she sent it to the mind of the girl before her.
Adisla screamed as her illusion fell away. She was not in her bed at all; there was no house, no loving family around her. She was pinioned on a narrow wedge of sharp stones at the end of a tapering cave. The stones cut her and the weird light of oil lamps cast shadows that seemed like long cruel fingers, reaching out to tear her flesh. She was in agony.
As the rune spilled from the witch’s mind, Adisla saw what was intended. She saw visions of death - hers and Vali’s, Feileg’s and Bragi’s, in that life and in others, stretching away into time. And she saw what the witch herself didn’t see. She saw Gullveig’s true name, and that knowledge was more terrible than the bonds that tied her down, more terrible than the sharp rocks that cut her, more terrible even than Vali, transformed and murderous. Adisla knew that the lady wanted her to call Vali, and now she knew why.
‘I will not,’ she said.
Someone came into view. It wasn’t the lady, but a pale and terrible child with an aged face. The witch queen opened her mind and it was as if all the ghosts and dreads that Adisla carried with her rose up to engulf her and drag her down. She saw her mother dying, Manni dead at the door, Vali slavering and grunting in that pit. Desperate to stop these nightmares swamping her, Adisla needed something to cling to, to blot out the vile images. The rune, shimmering and twisting in front of her, was her salvation, she thought, though she didn’t know where that idea came from. She stared into it, focused on it and knew in an instant that she had made a terrible mistake. A blinding white light burst onto her eyes as the rune seemed to sear into her like a branding iron burning into her mind.
A howl burst from her lips and from her soul. More than a sound, it was a magical emanation. Vali, sleeping as a wolf on the rock, heard it as the witch intended and understood what it meant. It shook him from the fug of digestion. He stood upright on his back legs and looked to the south-west.
Feileg, watching Authun and Saitada from the top of the Troll Wall, sensed it too at the precise moment he decided to follow the travellers around the mountain.
The witch was pleased. Her magic couldn’t call the wolf any more, he was too powerful, but the magic the wolf had weaved himself out of his connection to this girl was enough. He would come, she thought, to do her bidding.
On the island Adisla and all she had meant to him came to the front of Vali’s thoughts. She was in danger, he knew, and he needed to go to her. The sea channel between the island and the land was nothing to him, the wide plains and the mountain passes were nothing, nor fjords or swamps, valleys or cliffs. He took them all in devouring bounds, eating the distance between him and the girl, racing to the source of her cry at a pace no human, no horse, not even a bird could hope to match.
The resonance of her agony was his guide, a stream he could follow to its source. The frozen night of the far north melted into a pale dawn; farmsteads and sleigh trains flashed by; he flickered through forests, scattered herds of reindeer on wide plains, dropped from mountain peaks like a falling star and flew on towards his target as a warp in the light.
The caves slowed him. He forced his body down through the tunnels, only the power of his will strong enough to push him through. He didn’t think where he was going; Adisla’s scream called him on. In the shove and squeeze of his descent Vali came to himself, although it no longer seemed unusual to him that he had the form of a massive wolf, nor that the caves glittered with a million scents. His memories came back to him but they only increased his pain. The woman he loved was suffering terribly and the only meaning of his life was to find her and take her agony away.
Then he was standing before his father, Authun, in a cave full of gold. The king was terrible in his war gear. Vali tried to tell him that Adisla was in danger. He knew that his father would not understand his concern for a farm girl but he wanted to implore him to put that aside and help him. Then Authun had struck at him, and it was as if Vali was an unwilling passenger in his own body, his protests useless as the wolf drove forward to attack.
Again the voices crowded in on him, again the dreadful howl of the wolf echoed through his head, a sound that he knew was as much part of him as his love for Adisla. He was losing his way, surrendering to the fury of the animal he had become. Authun was down, his shield shat
tered, his weapon gone and the wolf was on top of him, Vali fading away like a drowsy rider on a hot day surrendering direction to his horse.
‘Help me.’ It was her voice.
Authun was hitting him with something. He felt nothing.
‘Help me.’
Vali was reaching out, trying to make the wolf’s body answer her call.
‘Help me!’
The wolf paused its attack and stood panting over the old warrior. Authun didn’t stay still. He rolled from under the wolf and made for the hoard pile, pulled out a jewelled sword and spun to strike at the animal’s back, plunging the weapon down with two hands.
The sword dug into the wolf’s spine and snapped, Vali felt nothing. He sent Authun sprawling to the floor with a back-handed blow from his forelimb.
‘Help me!’ Finally Vali had control over his movements. He broke from the combat and made his way down the passage following Adisla’s call.
55 Fenrisulfr