much.
He saw the cruel sword in the hands of his father, felt the cut, still bleeding, in his side, no matter that all his other wounds had healed. The Norns, he thought, had paused their weaving for him, and it was up to him if he wanted them to start again.
He wanted it all to melt away, to be as it had been. To him Adisla was still the girl by the fjord, lying with him in the grass under the brilliant sun. But that was just a dream now, and he had travelled too far for it ever to be reality again.
He turned his eyes to the warrior. Authun returned his gaze.
At last, Vali forced out a word: ‘Death?’
‘Death,’ said Authun.
The Moonsword flickered in the lamplight; the wolf’s eyes and teeth flashed from the dark.
When it was done, the sword lay on the floor and the wolf was still.
Adisla came forward to look at the corpses, her body shivering and her mind numb. The strange woman with the ruined face was bending over Feileg, stroking his hair. Adisla went to her and looked at him. His blue eyes were open, looking up into nothing. There was a cruel wound in his side where the wolf had torn into his belly. He wasn’t yet cold, but there was no breath in him and she knew for certain he was dead.
She took him in her arms and kissed him. In her mind she felt the shimmering presence of the rune that had seemed to burst with the scents of spring, to patter and babble like the sound of rain by a stream. Rebirth. She tried to send it to him, to make him whole again, but that art took years to learn and its cost was madness.
The woman with the ruined face was looking down at her, and Adisla understood what she said with her eyes: ‘There is a way.’
The woman took up the lamp and left the cave. Adisla lifted Feileg in her arms. The runes seemed to shine inside her as she did so, and he did not feel heavy, nor was the entrance to the cave difficult to pass through. She followed the light up through the silent tunnels to where she could feel fresh air on her face. At the end of a broad cave, where a bright shard of light split the dark, the woman stopped and put her hand on Adisla’s arm. Then she kissed Feileg on the forehead and touched Adisla’s cheek.
Adisla walked on. She smelled wind, rain and the cold coming off the sea.
The shard of light grew. She walked on. At the mouth of the cave she looked out from a ledge near the top of the sheer Troll Wall, the ground far beneath her feet. A vast distance of land and sea lay before her, glorious in green and blue.
She kissed Feileg and held him to her.
‘For hope,’ she said and stepped into the light.
Saitada had followed to the ledge. From somewhere a wolf was howling. She understood what its voice was saying: ‘I am here. Where are you?’
She stood listening for a while. Then she turned back to the caves.
57
The hunters were three days into the forest looking for the wolves. There was a new pack in the area, they were sure. Sheep had been killed and even an old horse. They had taken their bows and their bait and headed into the trees, looking for signs of the animals. They had found nothing and were beginning to think they had wasted their time.
Then, as the long dusk of summer settled over the trees and the moon hung full in the sky, a traveller had come to their clearing, asking to share their fire. He was a strange-looking man, tall and pale with a shock of hair that was an almost unnatural red. Still, he had a skin of mead with him, and they let him eat with them in return for a few cups.
The stranger was good company and funny too, but as the brief night approached conversation turned to religion.
‘I see you are men of the new faith,’ said the traveller, gesturing to the cross one of the hunters wore at his neck.
‘We are Christ’s,’ said a hunter. ‘You are a man of the old ways, I can see.’
‘I like to get as many gods as I can for my money,’ said the stranger. ‘It seems to me that all the Lords of Asgard give a better bargain for your sacrifices than the one god of the east.’
The men laughed.
‘There are places in this land where you’d lose your tongue for saying that,’ said one.
‘Yes, the meek and merciful god can get in quite a bate when he’s crossed, can’t he?’
‘It’s no sin to defend the word of Christ,’ said another man.
‘Even if that word tells you that such a defence is sin?’ said the traveller. ‘Are you recent converts or born into the faith?’
‘This time five years ago I crawled on my belly before idols, then the way of grace was shown to me,’ said the first hunter.
‘Why did you change?’ said the stranger.
‘I was a slave and the church paid for my freedom,’ he said. ‘Christian men should not be the slaves of pagans. So says the holy father.’
‘And you?’
‘The same,’ said the second hunter.
‘It wasn’t so for me,’ said the third, who was quieter than the other two, and cleverer.
‘What was it?’
‘I felt the old gods were savage,’ he said, ‘and this new one offered a gentler way. He so loved the world that he sent his only son to die for our sins. It seemed a beautiful story, how the god took flesh as a man.’
‘You never saw that with Thor, did you?’ said the first hunter.
‘I don’t know about Thor,’ said the stranger, ‘but it is well known that the old gods often took flesh as men.’
‘How so?’
‘Have you not heard the stories? Of how the gods can split off a hair and grow it as a man, how their incarnations forget their godly origin and live as ordinary people. More of a challenge to be a god and not know it, I think, than to walk secure in your divinity as Jesus did.’
‘Tell us one of these stories,’ said the first hunter. ‘I am in the mood for a tale and far enough away from the priests to not mind hearing one.’
So the stranger told them a story of how the old mad god Odin had a dream one day that he was a witch in the earthly realm. But the dreams of the gods are not like the dreams of men: they take flesh. The witch became powerful in magic and the god became jealous of his earthly self. So he sprinkled prophetic visions on her, like seeds onto the field. Then the great god Loki had a dream too, of a beautiful slave girl who took a hot iron to her face to spite her owner. And Loki fell in love with his dream and came to earth to sire two children with her. One was the Fenris Wolf, who will eat the gods on the final day. The other was just a man. He gave them as gifts to a king and to the witch. A gift from Loki is no gift at all, though, and the wolf ate his brother and the witch before the king killed it with his dying blow, just as the wolf will kill Odin on the final day before it too is killed. In this way it is said that Loki and his children are both Odin’s enemies and his helpers — they smooth the way to his destiny, though that destiny is death.
‘It pleases the gods,’ said the stranger, ‘to see the stories of their fate acted out in the earthly realm. The wolf and Odin have fought down the centuries and will fight down those to come. It’s easy to see where, if you know how to look.’
‘So Judas was Jesus’ helper, was he, by your reckoning?’
‘Judas helped Jesus die for the sins of man, it is said,’ said the traveller. ‘Well, if that was against the will of God it wouldn’t have happened, would it?’
