Aelis turned. ‘Vali, no!’ She didn’t know where the words came from nor what they meant, but they seemed to have an effect on the creature.
It let Ofaeti fall from its fingers. The Viking hit the water and lay clutching his bloody sides, rasping for breath. Still men beset the wolf, and it turned to rip them down, losing itself in its fury as it bit and tore.
A rune arose inside Aelis, the first one she had ever known by name. Horse. Down the beach at a gallop came a grey mare, one of the Frankish mounts.
‘Lady, you must stay with us. I offer you my protection!’ It was the Raven. He had his own sword again but had not returned to the fight.
Aelis shook her head, backing away.
‘Lady!’
She took a handful of mane and pulled herself up onto the mare’s back.
‘He will kill you! The wolf will be your end!’ shouted Raven.
Go! she thought, and the animal kicked hard across the sand for the trees.
58
Aelis was gone, the wolf too. As soon as she had ridden away it had fought free of the Franks and run for the woods, dragging a knight’s corpse behind it.
Raven wiped his sword on his cloak and sheathed it. ‘Nastrond,’ he said.
Ofaeti, still panting from where the wolf had seized him, nodded. ‘The corpse shore.’ He looked around at the bodies on the beach, recovered his breath and said,
‘She saw there wading in tides of blood
Oathsworn men and murderers too and betrayers of friends.
There ravens fed on
The corpses of the dead, and the wolf tore men.’
‘That is the time-worn prophecy,’ said Hugin, ‘the beginning of the twilight of the gods.’
Ofaeti put his hands to his sides. They came away wet with blood but the wounds were superficial. The werewolf could not have wanted to kill him, he thought. It had left twenty or more men dead on that beach. He had never, in all his battles, seen men so ripped and broken. The gulls and crows were circling already. The Viking had been shocked by the appearance of the werewolf and the ferocity of its attack but not by its existence. Unlike the confessor, he had no difficulty accepting the reality of magic. He had been raised on a hill farm and grown up with the certainty that elves, dwarves, trolls and wolfmen were as real as the sheep he tended, the rain that soaked him and the frost that chilled him.
Leshii appeared from behind a dune.
‘You were absent when the war work was done,’ said Ofaeti.
‘I brought the Raven here, showed him the nearest place to catch a ship, knowing this monastery would attract them.’
‘You brought no one anywhere. These meetings are preordained,’ said Hugin; ‘they were destined to happen.’
‘And is it preordained for you to get into Ladoga? Because if it is, you don’t need my help.’
‘You may have your part to play in what is to come,’ said Hugin, ‘but do not imagine that you can avoid your fate.’
‘My wars are the wars of coin and exchange,’ said the merchant. ‘I would have got in your way fighting that thing. What was it?’
‘An enemy of Death,’ said Hugin.
Leshii looked around him.
‘I wouldn’t like to meet Death’s friends then,’ he said.
Ofaeti for once did not feel like joking. He wanted to honour his dead comrades with poetry in the traditional way of warriors.
‘Empty the mead benches of Valhalla were,
So the dark god sent his wolf to fill them.
Now the sands run with the blood of the brave
And the warrior’s hands itch to hold the weapons of revenge.’
Hugin listened carefully. He had not been raised among the northmen but was steeped in their traditions. He knew the honour that Ofaeti was giving his friends was as deep as that the Franks gave their dead with their prayers and tears, or the Moors with their wailing and lamentations.
‘My kinsmen are dead,’ said Ofaeti, ‘and I have no way back to my homeland. I have three ships I can’t sail and treasure I can’t carry. Food and drink to me now are treasure. I have had smoke in my head for days and it will not clear but by cool water.’
Raven stood. ‘Walk up to the monastery; there will be food and water there.’
‘You wear a rich robe, warrior,’ said Leshii. ‘Did any other treasure come with it?’
‘It’s already in the ground,’ said Ofaeti, ‘so don’t think to rob me of it.’
‘The reverse,’ said Leshii. ‘I was thinking to secure you a good price.’
‘I will follow the wolf,’ said Raven.
‘I’ll come with you. That wolf has killed three of my friends and I would have the payment of its pelt for that,’ said Ofaeti.
Hugin nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have a use for you.’
‘No one uses me,’ said Ofaeti.
‘The gods do, as they use us all,’ said Hugin. ‘There is a destiny in train here, a destiny of blood. It is up to me to stop it.’
‘I thought you said destinies couldn’t be avoided,’ said Leshii.
‘Not by you,’ said Hugin, ‘but with effort and determination heroes may stand against the gods.’
‘So modest,’ said Leshii.
‘How will you avoid this destiny?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Find her.’
‘She was going to Helgi, if that helps,’ said Ofaeti.
‘That was her intention when she left me with a wet arse in Francia,’ said Leshii.
Raven thought for a moment. ‘Then it’s as I thought. Helgi must die,’ he said.
‘What good will that do?’
‘The god is on earth. This I saw in visions, and I am sure it is true. My sister was a sincere defender of the god and she sought to protect him from his destiny by killing the lady and using me to help her. The wolf follows the lady. The lady goes to Helgi. There, then, is where the skein of fate ends — when the wolf fights the corpse god.’
‘You think Helgi is your god?’ said Ofaeti.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What if he is?’
‘Then I must try to kill him before the wolf does. I must stop the destiny unfolding.’
‘And what good will that do?’
‘It will end it.’
‘What?’
‘The cycle of blood — the god comes to earth, the wolf comes to earth and kills him.’
‘Why do you care?’
‘Because the lady draws the wolf on, the lady dies too.’
‘I ask again,’ said Leshii, ‘why do you care?’
‘Because when the enchantment broke,’ said Hugin, ‘I remembered.’
