Bjarki nodded and went to the slab. He was a massive man but his arms were not long enough to span the stone. He tried to get his fingers behind it but it had jammed against the sloping end of the passage. Then he crouched and tugged at the rock at its front. He couldn’t get the purchase to move it.
‘Allow me,’ said Veles. He took up one of the wooden wedges lying on the floor and hammered it with a stone into the crack between the slab and the passage wall. Then he sent a crewman down to the beach for water. The man came back and Veles poured the water onto the wood.
‘Do you hope to wash it away?’ said one of the farm boys.
‘Yes,’ said Veles. After a few moments the wood began to swell and the gap between the wall and the slab widened. Bodvar Bjarki nodded, impressed, as Veles drove in more wedges.
‘I am a magician in my own right, as you can see,’ said the merchant with a smile.
Eventually, the gap was big enough and Bjarki stepped forward. He forced his hand in and pulled. Nothing happened. He spat and he swore, working himself up into a rage, mumbling under his breath, ‘Odin, war merry, lord of death. Odin, destroyer, wrecker, mighty slayer. Odin means frenzy. Odin means war. Odin, Odin, the mad, the half blind. Odin! Odin! Ahhhhhhh!’
The slab lifted. Bjarki heaved it into the vertical, where it teetered for a heartbeat and seemed that it would fall back into place, but then it tipped towards him. Bjarki leaped back and the stone followed him with a crash. There was a rush of stinking air from the hole in the cave floor, and even Veles, a man of iron stomach, found himself retching. Two crewmen had to turn aside to vomit. Even Bjarki recoiled, though he stepped forward again pretty quickly.
‘It’s a tomb,’ he said, ‘and a fresh one — you can smell the rot. Come on, lads, it’s a good sign. No one’s been here before us. Here’s my freedom from my oath to Forkbeard.’
He kneeled and secured a rope to a projection in the rock over the hole that seemed designed for the purpose.
‘This is good,’ he said. ‘They’ve helped us out here, boys.’ He grinned. ‘Last one down’s a pauper.’ Then he lowered himself into the blackness.
What was in that pit? Vali. No, not Vali. Something had Vali’s thoughts but they no longer defined its personality. They were loose and unconnected, shooting stars, here and then gone. His memories and experiences were pulp, running into each other, friendship and love no more important than the feel of the rock under his feet, the cold of the cave.
At first he had accepted being in the pit because of his love for Adisla. He knew how near he had been to killing her, and though the sound of the slab sealing him in had filled him with despair, he had also welcomed it. While he was trapped he could cause no more harm. When he’d seen the stricken Noaidi, his animal self had taken over and he had accepted his fate for quite different reasons. He had food, the pit was sheltered — why would he not want to be there? Then the food had run out and he had beaten the walls with rage, leaped at the rock sealing him in, tried to dig his way out and eventually, as any beast would, accepted his fate and sat down.
By then he could hardly remember who he was. His humanity seemed like a shoal of silver fish, turning and moving in the water, suddenly possessing shape and form and then scattered to chaos by massive jaws.
Veles was not far behind Bodvar Bjarki. He cut his hands coming down the rope and cursed as he hit the rubble of the floor.
Someone threw down a burning torch. Veles picked it up and peered around. He touched the wall — something sticky was on his fingers. He licked at them and then wiped his tongue with his sleeve. It was blood.
In front of him Bjarki was edging forward, sword drawn.
‘There are emeralds here,’ whispered the berserk. ‘Look. They’re huge.’
‘Very likely cheap agate,’ said Veles, ‘I will need to value them properly.’
But they weren’t emeralds or agate. They were eyes.
52
The darkness was not the same as the last time, thought Authun. On the way into the caves from the back of the mountain the woman had taken flint, steel and tinder and a big bundle of candle stubs from a hole under a rock. She lit the candles, one off another, as they descended. But when one blew out the darkness did not seem to cling too close or to seethe with animosity and harm.
The woman had prepared him before they went down — in her way. She had taken the wolf’s head pebble that hung by a thong at her neck and tied it around his neck.
‘For luck?’ he said.
‘Death,’ she said.
He let her tie it. He felt no different, and as far as he could see it was only a piece of stone.
The king found it hard to credit that this entrance to the witches’ caves was so easy to find. It was virtually signposted — a narrow crawl running into the side of the mountain, identified by sacrifices left at its mouth. The tunnel had the shape of a long-handled spoon, spreading into a tall chamber at its end. Access to the actual caves was through the roof of the tunnel, reached by stacking a pile of flat rocks and hooking down a rope with a stick. Anyone could have got in. The split in the cave roof was far from obvious but Authun wouldn’t have trusted the entrance to stay hidden if the caves had been his refuge. It would only take a hunch from a curious warrior and the enemy would be in. Why had he gone up the Troll Wall when this was available just on the other side?
Authun wondered if he was heading into a trap. He reminded himself that no one coming to those caves would see anything the witches didn’t want him to see. So, were they allowing him in? He had looked at the uncollected sacrifices at the entrance — bottles and pots, anything that couldn’t be taken by animals. Were the witches even there?
Still, he wasn’t scared. Certain of death and welcoming it, there was no room for terror in his life. So the bodies of the boys, the rat-eaten corpses of the girls, the puffy flesh of the drowned women in the ponds and the rotting, blackened faces of those who hung by ropes from spars of rock only caused him the discomfort of remembering how many people he had sent to similar fates.
The constriction of the tunnels, however, was another matter. Authun was not afraid of death but he had no desire to suffocate, his own arms sealing his mouth and nose in a tight gullet of rock. Some of the passages were scarcely wider than his head and he had to squirm and wriggle his way through. He began to see why this entrance was not so well guarded as the others on the Troll Wall side of the caves. An enemy coming in this way would be hugely vulnerable. A warrior can’t fight with his arms pinned above his head. So the route was easy in some ways but at the same time very tricky, even without the witches sending their nightmares stalking through the passageways.
As he descended he became more and more sure the witches were dead. How could he have held on to his sanity so long in those tunnels if they hadn’t been? What had killed them? They rested by the light of a candle by an underground pool. The pool caught the reflection of the ceiling in the candlelight, turning it into a shimmering golden disc. He looked at Saitada. Had this woman become a witch? Was she now their servant and was he there to kill whatever had caused so many deaths in the tunnels? He put the thoughts aside. They were no good to him. He would just concentrate on what he would do. Act, as always, do and kill until he himself was killed. He wanted no more murders, but when the fight presented itself he would not shirk from it. He knew no other way.
After what he thought must have been a day in the caves he became aware of a soft glow answering the light of their candle from down the tunnel. He looked at the woman and put his hand to his sword. She shook her head, which he took for an assurance of safety.
Drawing quietly closer he realised that the light was a reflection of their own candle from a mass of gold. Weapons, armour, rings and jewels were piled to the ceiling like a miser’s dream. It was said the witches had collected tribute and plunder for a thousand years. It seemed too short a time to collect such a hoard.
‘How many have died to reach here?’ he said, as much to himself as to the woman, and then almost laughed. For most of his life he would have rejoiced in this, taken all he could and returned in glory. Not now. He hardly
