The Raven pointed. A howl came from the bank, eerily flat in the heavy air.
‘Our friend the wolf?’
‘I think so,’ said Hugin.
‘Then we are in good luck to have found him so soon. We can kill him and go home.’
There was movement on the ice — black shapes, fog spectres. But not spectres, men. Twenty paces from the ship the druzhina emerged. They were terrifying-looking warriors — gigantic in their furs, their breath steaming about them as if they were creatures of the mist. They faced the ship in a line, silently staring at the men by the brazier. The Raven’s sword was free from its scabbard and the two guards soon lay dead.
‘Too late to worry about what’s out there, I think,’ said Ofaeti, glancing down at the corpses. He looked at the fog; it was still reducing vision to less than the throw of a stone. He could run, he thought, lose himself in the murk. Maybe. But he would probably be cut down before he got away. Unlike the Raven, he wasn’t quick on his feet. Besides, he hadn’t been raised that way. Running was not for Thiorek, called Ofaeti, son of Thetmar of the berserker line of Thetleif. He vaulted into the ship and drew his sword.
The Raven gave him a questioning look.
‘Go if you need to,’ said Ofaeti, ‘but tell my tale. Say how the brave fatty faced the many at Aldeigjuborg and made a few widows before he died.’
‘Run. We’ll make the shore before they do. You are to tell my tale.’
‘And miss this glory? Find another skald to sing your songs, crow balls.’ Ofaeti grinned and raised his shield. The warriors advanced at the walk. They had cords tied about the soles of their boots and had a good grip on the snow that lay on the river’s ice.
‘They’re coming. Go on.’ The Raven held out his hand across the rail of the ship. Ofaeti took it. ‘Tell my tale,’ he said. Hugin nodded and was gone, a scrap of black fading to grey in the fog.
Ofaeti addressed the druzhina: ‘Now, my ice maidens, which one of you wants to face me in single combat here in the boat? What say you send forward your best man, and if I kill him you send me on my way with a pat on the back?’
Ofaeti forced his grip to relax on his sword. His mind went back to the victory they had won on the boat after the merchant had sacrificed the necklace.
The warriors kept coming, their pace increasing. ‘Come on then! But I warn you — you are many and I am one but I have Loki’s luck!’
The druzhina broke into a charge and Ofaeti prepared himself to die.
75
The shaft had been cut down into a tunnel which was propped up with pillars of stone and baked brick and extended away from Aelis, ahead and behind. In the shaft she could stand and see, while the day lasted. To gain any shelter from rain or cold she would have to crawl into the darkness.
Aelis struck at her flint. The momentary flash revealed little. It was as if the tunnel ahead of her ate the light, sucking it down into two black pits. She struck again, got some tinder going and lit the little lamp that had been provided for her.
Aelis sat for a while. Her hands went again to the pendant at her neck but she could not remove it, couldn’t make her fingers lift it or undo the knot. She looked up at the sky. The greyness was losing its glow. Soon it would be night. Rational thought seemed to evade her. How to get out? She just couldn’t force her terrified mind to concentrate.
Slowly, some sort of calm returned. Being scared was not going to get her out of the pit. Helgi had called it a mine, and if it was a mine then there would be wood or something she could drive into the wall of the shaft to climb out. Yes, it would be easy to climb up the inside of the shaft if only she could find some wood. She put the flint and tinder away in its pouch, which she tucked inside her tunic. She couldn’t afford to lose that.
There was a thump and something hit her hard across the face, knocking the lamp to the floor. She put out her hand and felt something. An arm! She could just make it out in the guttering flame of the lamp. Aelis drove herself back against the wall to get away from the dead man. She heard screams and shouts from above, some in Norse, some in Roman.
‘Witch!’
‘She bewitched the merchant!’
‘Kill her!’
‘He’s dead, Helgi is dead!’
‘Troll-witch, houserider!’
There was a dead body in front of her. It was him, Helgi. There was no time for horror or elation;, she had to save herself. She forced herself to crawl forwards. Protruding from the dead prince’s back was the handle of a knife. She pulled it out, kneeling on the body’s blood-wet furs. It came free. She looked at it and knew who had killed the khagan.
Aelis picked up the lamp and scrambled into the tunnel. She crawled, putting the lamp in front of her. But the tunnel quickly became very low and she was panicking. As she moved the lamp forward, she drove it into a rock. Its clay bulb burst. All she had was the oil on the wick. When that was gone she would be in darkness. She had gone no more than a body length when the flame guttered and died. Now she felt her way with her hands. The passage dropped steeply but she went on, scraping her knees and crying out when her head hit the low roof.
Men were coming down the ladder. Again the word she had heard so many times in Norse she needed no magic to translate it: ‘Witch!’
Aelis put her hand to the floor in front of her and felt nothing. The ground had disappeared. She turned around and dangled her legs into the void. They touched nothing, not even when she stretched them forward.
‘Get a torch!’ The voice was one of the khagan ’s wider army because it spoke in rough Greek.
So many voices now, she wondered the shaft could contain them all. She could hear five men at least behind her and other more distant voices, shouting and angry.
What to do? It wouldn’t be long before her mind was made up for her. She felt for a ladder going down, a foothold, anything. There was nothing. A fluttering yellow light came from behind her. Her pursuers had their torch. They were coming, crawling down the tunnel. Something flashed in the dark. A spear tip.
‘Witch!’
The man thrust with his spear but he wasn’t near enough. He crawled forward and pulled back his arms to strike again.
She searched for something to pray to. God? He had gone from her life. The runes? Never. They had robbed her of herself. She could think of nothing to help her at all.
‘Die, witch,’ said the man.
Then a name came to her, a name at once familiar and strange, from the life she had lived before. Not a magical creation at all; now more a memory, like a bright flash of childhood alive for a second in the adult mind.
‘Vali, help me!’ she whispered and jumped into the darkness.
76
Hugin followed the riverbank back into town. He would need to go in there alone. No matter; he had done that before. As he drew near to Ladoga’s walls he could hear voices — screaming and shouting — women, children. What had happened? A name was on their lips: ‘Helgi!’
