Aelis heard the clash behind her but didn’t dare to turn to see how the monks were faring against Sigfrid. She knew it would be badly. The Viking king seemed cut from the same cloth as her brother Eudes, a man raised to arms from his earliest years. She knew the two monks were no more than armed scribes, more at home with ink than spears, and would not do well against him.
She hurried down the hill. It was a broad grassy expanse, eaten short by sheep, and there was no hiding anywhere. Her only hope was a collection of little farmsteads below her. The sound of the fighting stopped but still she rushed on, leading the mule. The confessor, she thought, might be dead. He hadn’t moved or made a noise since they had tied him to the mule, and although she had checked him regularly, it had been difficult to tell if he was breathing or not.
Down, down, down the slope towards the group of houses and tiny fields. She heard the horse behind her, coming on at the trot. Sigfrid had no need to exhaust his mount by galloping, she thought; he had seen her and had all the time in the world. She gripped the knife she had taken from the monk. She was determined that Sigfrid wouldn’t take her without a fight but her hand was trembling. The king had just done for two young men, both armed with spears. What chance did she have? Next to none, but not none, she thought.
The sound of the horse came closer but still she didn’t turn, tugging the mule on through the moonlight.
Sigfrid shouted something in his own language and his words were harsh. She guessed he had lost men in the fight. That would have been her brother’s first thought.
‘Stop,’ he said in grating Roman. ‘Stop or die.’ She kept going, holding the knife by her side. The hoofbeats followed right behind and the horse drew alongside, the rider nudging its flank into her.
‘The saint is dead,’ said Sigfrid. ‘Stop and I might persuade my men to spare some of your monks. Come on.’
He leaned down from the saddle and slapped her fingers away from the mule’s reins with the flat of his sword.
‘I said stop.’
For the first time she turned to face him. ‘I am the daughter of Robert the Strong, scourge of the Norsemen and defender of the faith,’ she said. ‘My father was a second Maccabaeus to your heathen hordes. If you want me to stop, then stop me.’
‘You can walk back or I can punch you into unconsciousness and put you over the back of the mule with the saint. Your choice.’
It seemed as if Sigfrid’s physical self was not big enough to contain the strength of his soul. But there was something else too. He seemed to have a force emanating from him, which pushed others down, bullied and belittled them. Here was a man, she thought, who had only ever considered his own needs, his own glory, a man of violence and risk who was prepared to do anything to make the world see him as he saw himself. Aelis was used to such men and was not intimidated by them.
She brought up the knife. ‘I choose the second. It will be difficult to subdue me without taking a little damage yourself, I think.’
Sigfrid snorted and brought the flat of his sword against the back of her knife hand with a stinging rap. The weapon went spinning to the ground.
‘I’ve lost enough men today to darken my humour to pitch,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve given you enough chances. You are a virgin, lady, aren’t you?’
Aelis just spat at him.
‘Well, I think I’ll put you on your back and show you what you’ve been missing. If I have to break your jaw to do it, that suits me fine. After that I think you’ll come quietly enough.’
He began to swing himself out of the saddle. Aelis felt a great rage. She saw her brother’s city burning, her friends and subjects beset by Norsemen, the confessor tied and tortured, her father tricked by the Norse King Hastein into taking off his armour and then cruelly butchered. She was a woman and had never been able to take arms against the enemies of her people. She hated the Norsemen but she had never had an outlet for her hate. Now something gave it expression.
Again the shape came to her, the one that shone and stamped, breathed and sweated the idea horse. She had the shape in her mind and she saw it projected onto the form of Sigfrid’s animal. The king had one foot in the stirrup as he dismounted. He gave a slight shake to free it, but as he did so Aelis imagined the shape bursting into gallop. She saw wide plains of grass, felt her heart full and strong, and a sensation of effortless power swept over her as the horse symbol manifested inside her. Something between a word and an emotion leaped from her towards Sigfrid’s horse.
‘Go!’
The horse surged forward as though a wolf was on its back with Sigfrid’s foot still in the stirrup. His sword arm was flung back and he dropped the weapon, his body falling with a terrible twist. His head hit the ground hard, though he remained conscious, fighting to get his foot free. The horse pulled and bucked, dragging the king down the slope for ten paces before his foot came loose and he came to rest, lying panting on the ground.
Aelis wasn’t idle while this was happening. She ran to the sword, picked it up and rushed to where Sigfrid lay writhing. He had sat up to clutch his leg but his instinct had proved wrong. Aelis guessed the limb was broken and the pain of touching it had doubled the king over. She saw the fingers of his sword hand were shattered too, pushed back up into his palm.
Sigfrid nodded when he saw the sword and tried to stand, but it was impossible. He set his jaw and said, ‘I am to die. In battle, good. Will you let me say some fine words before the Valkyries come to take me? You will tell them to your skalds, your masters of song? Kill me but let me be remembered.’
Aelis looked down at the man in front of her, everything she despised made flesh. It was Sigfrid and his kin who had burned Chartres and taken her father’s lands in Neustria, they who controlled what should have been hers. It was Sigfrid who had put the sons of the Church to the sword and brought plague and starvation to her people.
‘I’ll tell them nothing and you will be forgotten,’ she said.
She went to push the sword into him two-handed, but Sigfrid caught the blade in his one good hand.
Blood poured from his fingers as he tried to force it back. Sigfrid smiled. ‘I regret having this sharpened, now,’ he said. His hand was shaking, blood streaming down the white of his arm. Aelis shoved as hard as she could, driving her full weight into the pommel of the sword. But Sigfrid, facing death, was still terribly strong and he held the blade.
‘Do you know what the prophecy says, Aelis, what the raven woman gave her eyes to discover? Do you know? You have a wolf on you, a wolf, and he hunts you eternally, through many lives. But the wolf knows only destruction, and when he finds you he will destroy you and all you care about. You are cursed, Aelis, for ever, tied to the destiny of the gods.’
The king could hold the sword no longer. He gave a great cry and threw the blade aside, but Aelis brought it back to his face and lunged again. He tried to turn away but was hampered by his injuries and the sword plunged into the side of his neck. Blood pulsed from the gaping wound. Sigfrid put his hand up to try to stop the flow but it was useless. He fell back, looked at Aelis and, with his last available strength, shook his head and smiled. ‘A woman, some sort of wolf, then. Perhaps I was Odin after all,’ he said, and died.
Aelis sat down, panting and shaking. She was covered in the king’s blood. She looked around her, back up the hill. No time to recover, no time for delay. She ran to where the monks were. Marellus was dead, a scarlet bloom of blood visible on his pale skin where his habit was open at his chest, but Abram was alive, if unconscious. He bore no obvious signs of a wound other than a hugely swollen jaw. The king must have punched or clubbed him down, she thought.
She went back to the king’s body. Quickly she stripped off his clothes and put them on. They buried her, as did his mail hauberk, but she wore it anyway. It felt very heavy on her shoulders, but once she had tied the king’s big belt around her, the weight was spread and more bearable. There was a comfort in the heaviness too, a feeling the armour might do some good. She strapped on Sigfrid’s sword and knife, threw on his swamping cloak and put the shield on her back as she had seen her brother do so many times. She almost hated to take it because it bore the loathed symbol of the wolf she had seen flying from the Vikings’ banners. The helmet was so big it was useless, but she put his boots on, glad to get something on her bare feet. The king had money with him — two dinars and three tremisis. He also had a fine arm ring in silver, a serpent eating its tail. She pushed the purse into the front of the hauberk and the ring after it.
