swig. Helgi had played the games so many times that he found it impossible to fail at them and sometimes broke his rhythm deliberately just to wet his palate.
So he had gone alone, shielding his face with his cloak as he walked half blind through the storm.
The man had stood by the fire, the snowy wind turning the back of his body white, looking like a thing of ice himself, a statue topped by a shock of red hair. Helgi told the guard he was a poor host and to get the visitor some food, and the traveller had smiled at him. With his smile, the blizzard stopped and the wind died.
Helgi had looked up. It was night, just past dusk, and the sky was a dark and frozen purple, the stars shards of ice, the slim moon an icicle ready to drop. Without the shrieking wind the special silence of the snow fell upon the town and with it a sense of complete stillness. Helgi felt strange. ‘I know you,’ he had said.
‘And I you, my burning prince, whose desires have melted away all the storm.’
‘What do you know of my desires?’
‘The only thing worth knowing about them.’
‘And what is that?’
‘They will never be fulfilled.’
Helgi felt his blood fall to his knees, though he maintained his composure. It occurred to him to strike the man down where he stood for his insolence, but he felt strangely vulnerable. The freakish change in the weather had unsettled him, but there was something else. What? This man, the firelight crawling over his body like so many snakes, had come half naked through weather that could kill a horse under its rider.
‘Then I should make them greater,’ said Helgi. ‘That way, in falling short, I will have enough.’
The man smiled. A grin of ancient hunger like a wolf’s, thought Helgi.
‘You know what will kill you.’
‘My horse. I am glad of it. It means I am immortal for Helgi owns no horses. All he rides, he borrows.’
‘What a fate! To be master of nothing but a borrowed horse, your lands snatched away by the dead god’s hand. Would you see him?’
‘Show him to me.’
The man moved his hand and the snow in the gatehouse square rose from the ground. It swirled and eddied, turned tiny whirlwinds and finally took shape. It was a scene from the sagas. The dread lord Odin, one-eyed and fearsome, his face contorted into a scream, sat on his great eight-legged horse Slepnir, driving his spear down at a terrible wolf that tore and bit at his shield. The sound of the battle grated through the town and Helgi wondered why none of his druzhina came out to see what was happening.
The spear stabbed into the wolf, lodging in its flesh, and the animal gave a terrible keening howl but it didn’t falter in its attack. The rider’s shield shattered, and the wolf’s front paws dug into the horse’s flank, its teeth snapping at the man’s throat, its body tossed around in a crazy spiral as the monstrous horse screamed and bucked to be free of it. But the wolf did not let go.
And then the snow spectres crashed to the earth and the night was quiet again. Helgi walked forward to where they had fought. All that lay on the snow was a twisted rope. Helgi recognised the triple knot of Odin.
He picked it up and took it to the beggar. It seemed the natural thing to do.
‘When he died last time,’ said the man, ‘this happened.’ From nowhere he produced a long knife and with skilful fingers cut the knot into three pieces.
‘He is in the world, sundered,’ said the man, holding the pieces of the rope out to Helgi. ‘If he ever becomes whole again you and the armies of mankind will have never known such destruction. He will light a fire from the shores of the blue men to Thule, and from the green hills of Albion to the sands of Serkland.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Helgi.
‘He is in the world, as three. If he becomes one again, you and all the kings of the world will run from him like rats from a fire in the corn. Only his favourite will remain. Ingvar will triumph. Ingvar will rule.’
The man’s words seemed to fizzle and sizzle in Helgi’s mind with the sound of a branding iron on an animal’s back.
‘And how does he become one?’
‘How he does anything — by death. Three live with the runes within them. Fragments of the god. Eventually there will be just one, and your destiny will fall upon you and sweep you from the earth.’
‘Who are they? What do I need to do?’
‘Those who drink at Mimir’s well pay a price so to do. Odin gave his eye for wisdom; the bright god Heimdall gave his ear. What did you give?’
‘My peace.’
‘It was not enough. More is required.’
‘What?’
‘A child.’
‘Which child?’
‘The one who sits beside you in your great hall.’
‘For what?’
‘For death.’
Helgi felt a delicious current of anticipation flow through him. Could the god really be asking for Ingvar?
‘And if I do this, the god you have shown me does not come?’
‘Your debt to the well will be paid. Your name will echo down the ages as the mightiest khagan of the earth. You will have a vision, and the way forward will be revealed to you.’
Helgi smiled. ‘You are a god,’ he said. Helgi could sense it. The air around the man seemed to have a pressure to it that rendered the prince’s senses dull, as if he was underwater. Next to him, Helgi felt slow and fragile.
‘I am.’
‘What is your name?’
‘I have many. Here I am Veles and in Rome I am Lucifer. To you I am Loki.’
Helgi felt fear stopping up his breath like a suffocating hand. He composed himself. The terror quietened. He had come to the attention of the gods. He was important, marked for greatness.
‘They call you lie-smith,’ said Helgi.
The god smiled. ‘Those who do not listen make me a liar,’ he said. ‘Men hear what they want to hear, and when they curse me it is not for lying but for speaking the truth. Thank you for the warmth of your fire. I shall repay the gift when I return to take what you have promised me.’
He turned and walked out into the snow. Helgi watched him go, thinking how foolish the gods must be to demand as a sacrifice what he had been praying for them to take away.
That night he had dreamed of a lady who lived in the land of the Franks, blonde and beautiful, a lady who walked in gardens by a river.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘One of the three. You shall know me by these signs.’ She held out her hand. In it were eight wooden counters, all marked with a rune.
‘What is your name?’
‘Aelis, of the line of Robert the Strong.’
‘While you live, I prosper,’ he had said to her.
He had sent a delegation to her brother at Paris the next day, asking for her hand in marriage. He didn’t even receive a response. He had considered an attack but his army was tied up at Kiev, keeping the Pechenegs at bay. That’s when he had decided to kidnap her.
On the roof by the healer Helgi looked down at Svava. He had not thought the god would ask for her. The god had said, ‘The one who sits beside you in your great hall.’ Ingvar was there at all meetings, beside him at every judgement he made, every farmer’s squabble he sorted out, every warrior’s weregild claim, even when visiting kings were entertained. He had given his oath to raise the boy, but if fate struck him down, if the gods struck him down, then Helgi would be free of him without breaking his oath and free to name any heir he chose.
The prince hadn’t even considered the girl — he was a warrior, how could he have thought her important or in any way interesting to the god? She was a scrap, a little thing not six years old. How could the god want her when he could take a boy now thirteen and already battle brave? But the god knew his weaknesses and Helgi had come to realise that you don’t bargain with such as he and walk away without paying in meaningful coin, never
