‘Your friends are gone. Our man Hrafn is seeing to your lady; your merchant has fled, and your monk is your supper. I will perform your dirty ritual, you flesh-eater, who cowers in the face of his enemies and calls it virtue.’
‘Our father-’ Jehan began the Lord’s Prayer.
More of the filthy stuff was pushed into his mouth, fingers shoving it past his tongue. He tried to bite, but his mouth would not close and he realised his jaw must have been broken by the rope. The agony went right through him as Saerda forced open his mouth. There was something else in there, something slick and wet, which slid into his throat like a bloody oyster. Saerda had his hand on the confessor’s nose, clamping shut his mouth.
‘It’s one of his eyes, holy man. Come on, priest. This is the body, this the blood. Here, drink and eat to go to your god.’
He threw the confessor back on the ground and for a second Jehan thought his ordeal was over. It had only just begun. Saerda called out the names of the parts as he forced them into Jehan’s mouth — the liver, the kidney, the heart and the balls. Jehan vomited but the slick meat was only shovelled back in.
‘Do you think you could eat all of him, priest? Think how holy you would be, think.’
Jehan’s thoughts were scrambling under the horror he was enduring. In his mind he saw a plain with a hollow, dead light, a body in front of him, its armour torn, its spear broken.
Saerda was pacing around him, now, taking his time.
‘Stop!’
‘I won’t stop. I lost my king and my horse tonight; the Raven’s taken a lady who could have brought me riches, and all I have is whatever I can get for your useless bones. That has put me in a fearful bad temper. You’ll eat until that temper’s spent.’
He pushed something more into the confessor’s mouth, wrenching back his head. He cursed as the monk convulsed and shook from his grasp. Saerda pulled him up by his habit but the monk wrenched back in a terrible spasm, tearing away from his fingers to lie trembling and jabbering on the floor. Jehan saw a cave, saw himself lying unable to move, not because of illness but because a rope, terribly thin and strong, wound about him, lashing him to a great rock. He saw the Virgin and heard her screaming at him that his destiny was to kill and to die.
‘You broke my bastard finger!’ said Saerda. ‘Now you really are going to pay for that.’
The berserker took up the glittering rope of Abram’s bowels, sat astride Jehan’s chest, and thrust it into the confessor’s face, forcing as much as he could past his teeth.
‘You’ll eat, you’ll eat and you’ll eat again,’ said Saerda.
The monk’s whole body twisted and writhed, and Saerda could not hold him. Jehan threw him off. The monk felt as though every muscle was trying to break free of the bone. His head turned and shook, his legs kicked, driving him around in a wild spin. His lips foamed blood. All he could think of was blood, Christ’s blood, streaming in the sky. The sun was blood, the moon blood, the air blood, the water and the light blood. He heard the words of the Bible in his head:
He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.
No, God had not turned against him; God had loved him and marked him out as special. But the words would not stop rattling through his head like a rat in an attic.
My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.
Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
The words seemed to speak to him, telling him something that was more bitter to him than any torture, any affliction or pain. God had deserted him. He could not believe it to be so. It was the work of a devil. Hell had set a worm in his mind.
He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgot prosperity.
And I said, ‘My strength and my hope is perished from the lord.’
Jehan screamed, more in his mind than with his voice: No! No! No! The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. The words were like a high and melodious music but underneath them something deeper beat out a dark poetry.
Much have I fared, much have I found,
Much have I got of the gods,
What shall bring the doom of death to Odin,
When the gods to destruction ride?
He had never heard that verse before but he knew the answer, it was on his lips.
Saerda drew his knife and leaped at the confessor’s chest, pinning him down, shoving the point into the side of his cheek.
‘Shut your rattle. You’ll eat him or you’ll eat yourself. I’ll cut you up and stuff you down your own throat.’
Jehan saw himself. He was lashed to the rock, his fetters tourniquets, his mouth wedged open by something sharp and strong. He knew the answer, knew who it was who would bring death to the pagan god.
The wolf shall be the bane of Odin,
When the gods to destruction ride.
Jehan reached up his hands and found Saerda’s head. He saw that cave in his mind, felt the sharp thin bindings cutting his flesh and pinioning him to the huge rock. The wolf, the wolf would bring death to the god. It was all he existed for, all that he did. There was a sensation of release and freedom. He was the wolf.
‘The fetters have burst,’ he said, and he broke the Viking’s neck.
22
Leshii had come round to find himself alone. The Raven, he thought, must have gone straight by him.
It was morning. He thought of the lady. At first he found it hard to orientate himself to determine which way she had run, but a gasp drew him to where she was. He was about to go to her but a glint of steel stopped him. It was the Raven, he knew, that naked figure, pale as a corpse, crouching in the grey dawn light by the river.
Leshii wanted to creep closer but he couldn’t make his legs do it. Fear overcame his will and kept him from moving. He was in terror of that awful man.
For the first time since he had met the berserkers, he thought of Chakhlyk. Where was the wolfman? Dead, he didn’t doubt it.
He thought of that skinny berserker too: where was he? His mind came back to what it always came back to — value. He’d seen enough of the berserkers who had drunk his wine to know they owed no blood loyalty to the king at the camp. They couldn’t speak Latin, couldn’t bargain with monks. His one way forward, which was not attractive at all, was to ally himself to those men. He turned the arm ring over in his hand. At least he had something of worth, as necessary to him as a weapon to a warrior. Now he could buy and sell again, now he could trade, now he was himself.
He outlined his position in his mind, the deal he was making with fate. The least he wanted was safe passage home. Helgi might have him killed if he came back empty-handed, but his mission had only been to lead the wolfman to Paris. However, it would be much better to return with the lady because there was no guarantee how the king might react and it was better to be certain of a reward. Ideally he wanted the monk to sell and the lady too. The lady was about to die, he had no doubt, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. So then, find the berserkers, employ them as bodyguards and get the monk, or his bones. He could promise to pay them once he was paid for the monk. He couldn’t ransom him, alive or dead, without someone to defend him.
But no, he wasn’t thinking straight.
Leshii fought to put his thoughts in order. He’d been Sigfrid’s prisoner. As soon as the king’s body was found
