the whole place was going to be crawling with Vikings looking for his killer and Leshii would be high on their list of suspects. The risk of going back to the Viking camp was just too great. He was faced with walking back to Ladoga with nothing to protect him but the coat he stood up in and his wits.
There was a movement in the trees. Horses, coming past at the trot, keening and fretful.
What was wrong with those animals? He’d heard that sound they were making recently, when the Viking horse had taken a throwing axe in the neck. It was the sound of terrible, mortal distress.
He looked through the trees, away from where the Raven crouched at the water’s edge.
There was more movement. Yes, the king’s big horse. A horse would make his journey much easier, if he could make it come to him. But it seemed to be having some sort of fit, stamping at the ground, sweating and frothing. It was looking towards where the Raven was crouching. It was Sigfrid’s animal for sure, the one Aelis had been riding. Further off in the trees he heard another call, a bray. It was his mule! Now he could get that. If Leshii knew anything, he knew mules, after thirty years on the trade routes. He felt sure he could catch it and got to within about twenty paces, whistling softly. He could see the animal was scared but it was in nowhere near as bad a state as the horse. ‘Come on, girl, come on.’
The mule took a few paces away.
Something came running through the trees to Leshii’s left. There was a huge cry, another answering it. Against himself he ran to see what it was. It was the wolf.
23
Death did not come to Aelis, but something like it did. The shadows unwrapped, reached forward and took the Raven to the ground before he could strike.
Hugin was standing again almost before he’d gone down, slashing up and around with the knife with a terrible speed. At first, as the two figures grappled in front of the sharp morning sun, Aelis thought it was a wolf. It sounded like a wolf and was as quick, but she saw, as an arm flashed out to block the knife, that it was a man, the same man who had come for her in the church.
‘Run, run,’ he was screaming. ‘He will kill me soon and then he will come for you again. Run!’
She tried to stand but her legs wouldn’t obey her; they were frozen dead. She got half to her feet but fell like a drunk, grabbing for a tree with an arm that was numb with cold. She fell, head smacking into the ground. Then she tried again, but she couldn’t even feel her limbs, let alone use them.
‘Run, run!’
Aelis heard that sound in her head — like a great rushing of water, the movement of wind in the mouth of a cave, the tide of the blood in the ears, but it was none of those things.
The Raven was on top of the wolfman. He had his knife in both his hands and was straining to get the point into his opponent’s neck. The wolfman had caught the blade, the blood on his fingers bright in the dawn light. Hugin gave a great hoarse cry and drove the knife down, but the wolfman snapped it and used the Raven’s downward momentum to drive his head into his opponent’s nose. Then he was on him, screaming and biting and punching and tearing. The sorcerer went for his sword but the wolfman pinned his arm, making it impossible to draw. The men were on their feet now in a brawling embrace, staggering from tree to tree. They fell, broke, got up again, but the wolfman never let Hugin get far enough away to free his sword. But the Raven didn’t need a weapon. With ferocious speed he smashed his knee upwards into the wolfman’s midriff, driving him up into the air. The wolfman hit the ground like something wet.
Aelis thought her mind was going to split. That sound was within her and without her, coming from that pulsing, breathing, running rune. What was it?
The Raven reached for his sword; the wolfman lunged to stop him, and for a second they stood swaying together by the river’s edge. Then the big horse smashed them both into the water. Aelis finally placed the sound. It wasn’t water, blood, wind or drums. It was hooves.
Leshii came running. The Raven was gone, but the wolfman was clinging by one hand to the branch of the tree that had saved Aelis. Leshii could see he wouldn’t last long. The horse had knocked him almost senseless and he was groaning. Leshii had never heard him acknowledge any hardship before. The wolfman was twenty paces out in the powerful current; Leshii was old, he couldn’t save him. But he had to. It was not heroism or fellow feeling that drove him on but, as ever, practicality. He needed a protector and he needed someone to help complete his mission. Chakhlyk was his only hope.
‘I am coming, dry one, I am coming.’
The king’s horse had knelt down beside Aelis, lightly pressing its body into hers, offering her its warmth. The other animals had come in too — Saerda’s horse and the mule. Leshii knew what he needed to do. The mule was a pack animal and wouldn’t like to be ridden, but it would be led. He took its halter and walked it out into the rushing water, standing upstream so his weight pushed into its side. He knew there was no creature on earth as sure- footed as a mule, and the animal went out into the river with a slow confidence.
About ten paces in, the pressure of the water became too much for Leshii and he draped himself over the mule’s back, driving it on with a slap on the rump. The water was only up to the top of its legs when they reached the wolfman, but the flow was so strong that the merchant knew he wouldn’t be able to stand unsupported. His plan was to wedge himself against the mule to resist the current. He dropped into the water and immediately realised he’d been too hopeful. The water caught his feet as the mule skipped free and back to the bank. Leshii slipped and grabbed for the wolfman on instinct, pulling him from the branch. The water took both of them, and drove them backwards but Leshii got some purchase on the riverbed and with a great heave shoved himself and the wolfman towards the bank.
The current pulled and turned them and then it had them, surging them on. For a few seconds they were lost, but then Leshii felt a great crack on his side, solid ground beneath his feet and grass in his hands. He’d been smashed into the bank fifty paces from the tree, where a bend narrowed the course of the river. He and the wolfman were alive. From across the river he heard something between a croak and scream. He peered across the bright water. On the opposite bank a naked figure with something tied to its back was pulling itself onto dry land.
Leshii coughed and stood, almost laughing.
‘Well, he won’t be coming back over here in a hurry. Chakhlyk, my dry one, you’re wet enough now.’
The wolfman heaved himself up onto his bleeding hands. Now Leshii could see the wound in his side, a thumb’s width of broken arrow shaft protruding from just below his last rib. No wonder people were scared of him, thought Leshii. He had fought the Raven with that in his guts. But the wolfman couldn’t be long from death.
‘He is calling to his sister,’ said the wolfman. ‘We need to go, and now. He has seen the lady and she is in great danger.’
There were sounds through the trees — shouting, lots of men.
‘No time,’ said the wolfman. ‘Come on.’
Aelis was trembling as the blood returned to her limbs. ‘What about the confessor and the monk?’
‘Murderers! King-slayers! They have his clothes, they have his clothes!’
There was one Viking, a boy, fifty paces off, just visible between the trees and the river.
‘Go,’ said the wolfman. ‘Now. I will find you. Merchant, get on that animal and take the lady to Helgi.’
‘I am going to my people,’ said Aelis.
‘No. You have very little time. The wolf is coming into flesh — it is foreseen. You must get to Helgi; only he can save you from what stalks you.’
‘What stalks me?’
‘Death, destruction, again and again in many lives.’
He lifted the lady onto the horse and Leshii got up behind.
Aelis looked down at the wolfman and stammered, ‘W-why are you doing this?’
‘For love,’ he said. ‘I will find you. Aelis, Adisla, I will find you. Now go!’
A shadow sang across the light. The wolfman stepped forward and took it from the air. It was a spear.
