sorcerer watching him. He remembered the merchant who had fretted and sweated in the forest where the Viking Saerda had pushed him down the path to abomination. He crept closer and could make them out quite clearly — the fat Viking, the little merchant with his mule and the Raven, the one who had killed the witch. He knew them, but not as he had known them before — by vision and voice — but by scent. But he would not go to them. His animal drives were stronger than his human thoughts. He tried to understand what he was feeling. A phrase came to him: I am full of food and do not need to exert myself.
He watched as the travellers greeted the men on the boat. Then a guard left along the frozen river with the merchant following on his plodding mule.
72
The fog did not lift and it seemed that winter would go on for ever. Helgi sat in his hall, Aelis silent and brooding nearby on a bench. Since he had put the stone on her she had hardly spoken a word. However, the girl’s inability to remove the pendant told him he had been right to do so. She was one of them that Loki had mentioned, for sure. The fragments of the god. Helgi felt he had for the moment neutralised her.
Aelis looked at him with anger in her eyes. He knew she wanted to know what had happened to the monk. She had even tried to return to the ice herself, but he’d had his guards stop her. Her persistent questioning almost made him wish he had rescued the monk too. He couldn’t understand her attachment to the cripple. She seemed convinced he was enchanted, which made Helgi nervous. Eventually, Helgi felt he had to come up with a story and told her he had sent the monk to a mountain witch for a cure.
‘You cannot explain this to me as you would to a child whose dog has died,’ she had said.
‘I am a king,’ said Helgi, ‘and I owe you no explanation. You should thank me. You asked me to free you from the magic, and I did. We are all safer now.’ She’d just looked at him with her even stare, shaken her head and said nothing.
The townsfolk were used to her now and the hall was thronged with the everyday crowd, a small market in operation, inside to shelter from the cold.
‘Lord.’
It was one of the druzhina, the cold clinging to him as he entered the hall.
‘What is it?’
‘The merchant has returned. Leshii is back.’
Helgi stood. ‘And the wolfman too? Myrkyrulf?’
‘I don’t know, khagan.’
‘Don’t know?’
‘It’s difficult to say. He has a companion, but he’s a sorcerer and I never look too closely at those. They can bewitch you with their eyes. They have warnings for you, khagan.’
‘What warnings?’
‘They would not say.’ The merchant had decided to leave all that to the Raven to explain.
Helgi glanced at Aelis. He knew that her power was contained and felt secure as long as the winter lasted, but also knew the runes would aim to reunite, that the other fragments of the god might come searching. He now had a more secure home for her. Despite the fog, work on it had continued, and it was finished.
She was looking at him. Helgi had used the Norse word ulfhethinn — wolfman — and had mentioned the name, Myrkyrulf.
‘Sindre is dead,’ she said. Her Norse was faltering and unclear since he had put the stone on her.
‘What?’
She said it again in Roman. A spice seller — who had found little appetite for his wares since the fog descended — translated for the king: ‘The wolfman you sent for me died in the north of my country.’
‘And the merchant I sent with him?’
The spice seller translated: ‘Without the wolfman’s protection perhaps he lived, but I cannot see how.’
‘You are sure this is the wolfman?’ said Helgi to the guard.
‘I’m sure it’s the merchant, sir. He’s thinner than he was but I’m sure it’s him. The wolfman, no. I remember the fellow and he was a head above me. This man is the same size.’
‘And yet he claims to be the same sorcerer who came here?’
‘He said to tell the khagan that Sindre was here with the merchant and they had urgent business with him. They have a Viking with them — fat and tall. A great warrior, I should say.’
Helgi looked at the girl. Could this be the one that was prophesied? The half-god, looking to be complete? Odin, god of the hanged, of the spear, of magic and poetry, come to kill him and steal his crown.
‘The merchant is outside?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Take the lady to the gate by the back door of this hall. Do not let him see you. Leave her there and come back.’
Aelis was led out. She wanted to protest, but with the stone about her neck she was torpid and dull-witted; her limbs were heavy and her head ached.
‘Bring the merchant in.’
Leshii hobbled into the great hall feeling as if he might be sick. His leg was very painful despite the Raven’s artful splints and herbs, and it was beginning to swell and blacken. It had been shattered, and had it not been for the Raven’s medicines Leshii would have been unable to stand. The Raven had offered to remove the leg but Leshii had refused. He knew his time was up and saw no reason to spend what he had left in any more pain than he needed to.
Still, he could not quite bring himself to leave his swords and used the bundle in which they were tied as a sort of cumbersome crutch as he came before the king.
The murderous thing stalking the fog meant that no stranger would be allowed in to town. Leshii, however, had known the guards and been led to the king to bargain for his companion’s entrance while they waited on the ice. He was not hopeful.
Only the certainty of his death had given him the courage to enter the town. He still had to find the lady for the Raven and Ofaeti if he could but he was glad he would not have to sell her. He would be protecting her, saving her from the teeth of the wolf. And if the Raven fulfilled his threat to kill Helgi? So what? Leshii knew he did not have long and Helgi, he felt sure, would punish him for returning empty-handed.
But he would die at home, after a life on the trail. No foreign sands would cover his bones; he would lie in no perilous forest or high mountain pass. He would die within a few paces of the market where he had traded for thirty years, within an apple-pip spit of the land upon which he had hoped to build his comfortable house and fuck his dancing girls.
Helgi was seated on his big chair, the one he used on market days to judge the people’s disputes.
‘Dread khagan,’ said Leshii, attempting a bow.
‘You have the girl?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Then you are a bold fellow, returning here. What is your purpose?’
‘I seek news of her. She should be here by now — I sent her ahead.’
Helgi’s face was a mask. ‘You do not fear the wrath of your lord?’
‘I do, khagan, but I am old and I tried very hard to bring her here. We were separated to the north of Francia and I have not seen her since. I was with her on a boat but was washed overboard in a high sea. Thankfully a whale delivered me to the shore and I was saved, but the lady was gone.’
Leshii did not want to admit he had been thrown off the ship by the Vikings because that would have made him look weak. Neither did he want to start mentioning werewolves as he knew there were those in the town who might think he had brought the fog monster with him.
‘A whale?’
