‘I don’t know. Seems we’re safe for the short term.’
‘I meant, how are you?’ said Vali. ‘That was quite a smack he gave you.’
‘I lost a couple of teeth,’ said Bragi, ‘but I’ve had worse.’ He raised his voice. ‘But then again I’m used to fighting big men, not these skinny berserks.’
Vali thought he actually saw Bodvar Bjarki laugh as he tied off a rope.
Vali went back to the matter in hand. ‘What do you think we can do?’
Bragi shrugged. ‘We can’t sail the ship with two of us. If they’re not going to kill us, I’d say we have to stick with them. The moment we’re in sight of land, we attack.’
‘I have no weapon.’
‘Tyr, god of battles will, provide.’
‘He may provide an early death,’ said Vali
‘I have lived a long time,’ said Bragi. ‘I am not greedy for years, only fame.’
There were around sixty men on the ship, two of them with axes ready and another three with spears guarding them, watching with expressions somewhere between anger and fear. Feileg simply sat at the back of the boat looking at his feet. Vali remembered that the wolfman hadn’t liked travelling under sail but didn’t see how he could feel seasick in such a large, stable ship.
He looked out. No land. He realised that they must have left Haithabyr on the opposite course to the one they’d arrived on. They’d been taken to the town and transferred to another boat which had then doubled back. That was why their journey to the open sea had been so long. Bragi said the inlet from Hemming’s court connected to the river Edjeren and out to the Northern Sea by a man-made channel. That was the route they had taken. They were, Vali guessed, navigating now by the sun and the stars, which gave them a good chance of getting lost. That was his best bet. If the ship lost its way and had to set down on a strange coast he might be able to escape. He sat back against a spar.
‘Sleep if you like. I’ll watch these bastards,’ said Bragi.
So Vali slept, or rather hovered uncomfortably between waking and sleeping.
The sea fell to a dead calm and the boat went on under oar for a while. In his semi-conscious condition the rhythm of the rowing seemed like something animal, a heartbeat. His mind seemed to enter the beat, to be taken over by it, and then the cadence seemed to change subtly. It was no longer so slow and easy, but faster and more frenzied. He began to dream — or so he thought — and he saw Adisla and Feileg and that strange rune. It seemed to pulse and move, to vibrate and thump, and he realised it wasn’t the oars at all that were making the noise, but the rune. And it was not floating and incorporeal, as he had thought it to be, but was real, painted onto a surface. He breathed in and smelled hide and wood — a fire. The rune was shaking. It was painted on a drum. Someone was beating a drum with that horrid symbol on it. He looked through the rune and he saw Adisla — but where was she? She was at the centre of a circle of wild animals: wolves, bears, stags, even a huge eagle. But then his mind cleared and he saw them for what they were — men in animal masks. They were beating drums, drums peppered with that rune, which seemed to lift from the skins as they beat them, to go floating up through the night. He knew where they were going — towards him. They seemed to sweep over him, enveloping him in a swarm. He had the sense that the men were showing him that they had her. They were calling him, even laying a trail for him to follow. There was another thing there though, something old and hungry, something that prowled at the edge of his mind, watching. Its presence seemed like a blind shaft, a drop away into nothing, and the cold he felt from it was the same cold he had felt when Disa had worked her magic on him.
The drumbeat filled up his mind.
When he turned he saw the man he had seen at the shield wall, tall and pale with a shock of red hair.
‘Help me find her,’ said Vali.
‘You will find her,’ he said, ‘and you will be lost. Welcome the sorcerer’s gift. Your anger is now a gate for him and he can hear it opening. Let these little ones in.’
He had picked up a fistful of those spiky runes and sprinkled them over Vali’s head.
‘What does the drummer want from me?’
‘For you to know yourself.’
‘Who am I?’
The man held Vali in his arms and kissed him on the forehead.
‘Would you know?’
‘I would know.’
‘Then know.’
He was drowning again, the filthy water obscuring his sight, filling his lungs and choking his consciousness. The drums were thumping in his head and, above them, he heard Jodis telling them to put him under. He saw himself in that chamber where the rune had been, knowing that it expressed himself, Adisla and Feileg, knowing they were inseparable. He realised what he had missed before — he hadn’t seen where he was watching from. He felt a pain in his mouth like a pin, felt tight bonds about him, smelled blood and fire and felt an anger of injustice boiling within him.
He tried to speak his name, but all that came out was a howl of agony, a roar of injustice. He was the wolf.
‘Get up. This is our chance. In the name of Thor’s bulging nut sack, get up. What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?’ It was Bragi’s voice, shouting, urgent. Vali could also hear screams — men hurling obscenities and threats.
He stood. Something bizarre was happening. The merchant Veles came flapping past him, waving his arms almost as if he was swimming through the air. Then, with an unexpected turn of athleticism, he pulled himself up by one of the ropes that was securing the big barrels and leapt inside, quick as a rabbit into a hole.
Vali looked around. A huge full moon turned the sea to crumpled metal, and no more than bowshot away was a broad bank of thick fog almost glowing in the moonlight. There came the sound of rain — or something like it — and everyone scrambled for cover, cowering beneath shields or ducking under the longship’s rail.
He looked off to the side. Two drakkars, the real deal with carved dragons’ heads, were upon them, showering their ship with thick black volleys of arrows. Where had they come from?
‘Haarik! Haarik!’ came the chant.
They were raiders from Aggersborg. If Haarik was on board then Vali wanted his blood.
There was a shore in sight under the bright moon. They had blundered too close to Haarik’s land and were paying the price. Still, Vali would welcome being captured by Haarik — in a way. It would put him closer to Adisla. Logic though wasn’t uppermost in his mind. Something else was gnawing away at him. What had the man in the feather cloak said to him? He couldn’t think. His head was still resonating to the sound of those drums. Then all reason seemed to desert him. These attackers were the kin of the men who had stolen Adisla, killed little Manni, uprooted him from his home and the people he called family. Vali coughed. It was the same cough he’d had in the mire. His throat felt dry and tight, his head light, his ears seemed full of a throbbing beat. He couldn’t order his thoughts, couldn’t find direction.
‘Danes, Danes, Haarik’s men, thieves and murderers to be torn and wasted. Kill them. Kill them all. None alive, none alive. My oath is murder to them. I tear and bite, bite and tear.’
What was happening to him? Now he was shaking and coughing. Now he was freezing cold, just as he had been when Bragi had dragged him from the water of the drowning pool.
‘Pirates! Prince, it’s now or never. We should bargain with them. This is our freedom!’ It was Bragi, but Vali couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. His head was spinning. It was as if the reality he had experienced in his dream, the reality of the dark waters, had replaced that of the attack.
Some archers in Vali’s boat were returning fire although most of Bjarki’s men were still struggling to free their weapons from sea barrels. Vali seemed to move through a soup of stress and anger, as if the men leaked these things from them in their sweat.
A drakkar came swiping past, its oars withdrawn, to broadside their own, snapping off oars and sending men tumbling to the bottom of the boat. Only three men were left standing — himself, Feileg and Bodvar Bjarki, who was grinning and laughing behind his huge shield, a fine sword in his hand.
Grappling hooks came into the ship. The war jabber was in his ears, the stink of fear all around him. He felt as if the rune was hooked through his throat, pulling him up towards a terrible destiny. His blood pumped in his head like something was trying to burst from inside him. And then it did — a word that seemed more than a word,
