Fenrir

to kill the lady as quickly as he could. He had horses; he knew where the lady was going; there was no reason to delay.

All he could have hoped for at Saint-Maurice was to see the wolf, to know his enemy. He had achieved that, and not in any vision, as he had anticipated. He ran from the crypt without looking back.

44

A Defensive Action

‘We should go to Miklagard. We could exchange this lot for coin there. We’d get the best deal by far.’

It was dreadfully cold and the horses had laboured for a day into a stiff north wind, sharp with sleet. Now they had found some shelter in a turn of the valley and had decided to camp. They made a fire from the wood they had split from the monastery benches, piled on the clothes they had stolen and sat eating some fowl they had decided were free of poison.

‘At Miklagard the merchants wouldn’t even bother to barter. We’d be up to our nuts in dihrams,’ said Egil.

‘No,’ said Ofaeti. ‘If the men of the church there discover these treasures in our hands, they will just kill us. The whole thing is fraught with peril. Home, I say, then to Haithabu with enough men to make any pirates or churchmen think twice. Shit!’

‘Shit what?’

‘Franks! Someone must have escaped the abbey and got word to them.’

Two hundred paces away, where the valley twisted to resume its main course, seven horsemen were approaching at the trot.

‘Shield wall?’

‘With ten of us? We’d be skittled. Bollocks to that. Get up the slope — they can’t ride up there.’

‘What about the stuff?’

The Norsemen had their minds made up for them by the charge of the knights.

To Jehan the whole action happened as if in a dream. He saw the Norsemen flailing and cursing, trying to drag the gold-laden packhorses up the side of the valley; he heard the hooves of the charge thumping through the ground, the cries of the riders, the whistling wind. Then the horses were upon them, upon him.

Jehan was the only one who hadn’t moved. He just stood there transfixed. Stupid thoughts came into his head. These are rich men. They have fine mail coats. Their shields carry the red and white thorny cross of Richard the Justiciar. These are not Franks but Burgundians. Small details seemed more important than the fact that a fully mailed warrior was charging towards him with a sharp spear levelled at his head. Jehan had a sword at his belt but he didn’t draw it. At the last second the knight thought better of risking breaking his spear on an unarmed opponent and raised it. An enormous thump drove all the wind from Jehan’s body, snapped back his head and smashed him to the ground. The man had spurred his horse on at a flat-out gallop and ridden Jehan down. Two other horses followed the first and both struck him, one with a hoof to the ribs and the other on his head.

For a second Jehan was convinced he was dead. He felt torpid and slow, as if he’d eaten and drunk too much at a monastery lunch. He was sated, full to bursting with food. And yet he couldn’t remember eating. He had a headache and felt drowsy, although he was sure these weren’t the effects of being knocked down and trampled. The cold didn’t mean anything to him — the spikes of ice in the biting rain, the stinging wind, all meant nothing. He was sleepy. He had eaten, he was sure, and now he needed to rest.

Jehan fought off his torpor as five more riders appeared over the crest of the valley, screaming at the Vikings in their thick Burgundian dialect, ‘Lay down your weapons! Lay down your weapons!’

The first party of Burgundians were urging their horses up the hill, but Ofaeti and his men had achieved a good defensive position. Astarth had his bow free and was loosing arrows at the horsemen, causing them to back off behind their shields. The fresh riders came by at a gallop, narrowly missing trampling Jehan. Now there were Burgundians blocking both exits from the valley.

The Vikings had only the slope behind them, which very quickly became so steep that it was impassable, particularly if they wanted to keep hold of their packhorses and plunder.

Jehan felt himself lifted to his feet. Two of the Burgundians had dismounted and seized him and another had a knife in his hand.

‘I am not one of them,’ said Jehan.

Jehan had only a smattering of the Burgundian language, but, faced by death, suddenly found words that might have eluded him sitting around a fire chatting to merchants.

‘I am a monk and servant of the Roman emperor.’

There was a babble of talk among the warriors, too quick for Jehan, though he could understand that they were debating killing him. One voice pointed out that Jehan alone had not tried to run; another said that his clothes were soaked in blood — what more proof was needed that he had had a hand in the atrocity at the abbey?

‘What is the emperor’s name?’

‘Charles, called Fat, who is ally to your great lord, Richard.’

The men glanced at each other. The mounted horsemen were still harrying the Norsemen, making abortive charges up the steep slope.

The man with the knife spoke: ‘I’ll kill him anyway. He’s with the Varangians, that’s as good as being one of them.’

‘I am an honest pilgrim. My monastery will pay for my return.’

Jehan would normally have scorned to have bargained for his life, but there next to him was the girl, pale and ragged. Her eyes looked north and he knew that she was there to guide him to Aelis. This didn’t seem at all strange; it felt natural that he should follow her, natural that she knew what he was thinking and would know where to take him. He had to save Aelis; that was why he had been freed from the fetters of his infirmity.

‘You don’t look like a monk to me. Which monastery?’

‘Saint-Germain at Paris. I have travelled a long road and endured many hardships.’

Again the knights glanced at each other. A rock came whizzing past Jehan’s head. Ofaeti and his men had found some stones and were beginning to rain them down on the Burgundians.

‘Bring him back to the monastery,’ said a tall knight, ‘and we’ll scale this valley and take those bastards on foot.’

‘No,’ said Jehan.

‘Why not?’

‘They are rich men in their own country — they too can be ransomed. I can broker it.’

‘They killed our brothers.’

‘You are monks?’

‘As good as and as good as not. Richard is the abbot. We are his men. You can come before him at the abbey.’

So Richard the Justiciar was now abbot. That had happened recently, thought Jehan, or was it just that the drowsiness that had come down on him was robbing him of his memory? Richard’s presence meant one thing for certain: all the Vikings were dead. He had fought a bitter and successful war against his elder brother Boso and proved himself an efficient and merciless opponent. Richard was a monk only in name and doubtless would soon be moving his retinue of whores, hawks and hunting dogs into the abbey.

‘Those men are not your enemies,’ said Jehan. ‘We are pilgrims and happened upon the slaughter at the abbey. I instructed them to take your treasures to Saint-Germain. I did not know your lord would return and thought the abbey was at the mercy of brigands and thieves.’

The man with the knife laughed. ‘Good of you to be so tender-hearted. I suppose we’d just have had to ask for it back and Saint-Germain would have coughed it up straight away.’

‘I am not a thief,’ said Jehan.

More rocks showered down.

‘Tell them to lay down their arms then, and you can see the justiciar. He will see the truth, believe me.’