‘What did he say?’
‘That he was cursed. That demons were trying to trick him.’
‘This wolfman was one of them?’
‘I think so. He tried to trick the emperor, for sure.’
‘How?’
‘He gave him a sword and told him to kill him.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘The wildmen know many things about the gods. He said a wolf was coming for the emperor. It’s part of a great magic. I think he must be the wolf because he threatened to kill the emperor if the emperor didn’t strike him down.’
‘He wanted to die?’
‘He said it was the only way to avert what was coming.’
‘What was coming?’
‘Death in his glory.’ Snake in the Eye gave a big smile, like another man might wear on his face hearing he had a favourite meal for dinner.
‘And what did the emperor do?’
‘He ordered him confined and questioned. He ordered the chamberlain to tell the best scholars to question the wolfman and find out what was happening. I carried the message myself.’
Loys swallowed. He was the newest scholar in the Magnaura, a foreigner, untested and raw. Not the greatest scholar, though the master had named him so. The chamberlain had carried out the letter of the order.
‘Do you believe what the wolfman said?’
‘We have many stories. Some of them are true and some are not. I have many stories in my family. They are not dissimilar. Perhaps he believes them too much. The holy men spend so long alone their brains curdle.’
‘What stories?’
‘I only tell my tales in the hope or expectation of reward.’
‘What reward do you want?’
‘A service from you.’
‘I am always ready to help the emperor’s men.’
‘Then I’ll tell you my story.’
Snake in the Eye told the story he had told on the steps of Hagia Sophia, the one the strange traveller had paid a wolf pelt to hear as he travelled with the Varangian army from Kiev. He told how the slave had two sons who were caught in the schemes of the gods, how she had hidden them away but how the woman who bore the howling rune had brought them back together, as she always did, as she always must.
The boys came back to kill and to die, one to be a wolf, one to feed the wolf and give him the sustenance he required to kill the old god Odin in his human form. Odin embraces this fate as it gives the Norns — who the Greeks call the fates — the death they demand in this realm so he might live on in his heaven. The boys were a sacrifice, an eternal sacrifice, part of a story that had played out through history and would play out again and again, until Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods. Then the boys would avoid their fates: brother would not kill brother, and the dread wolf Fenrir, whom the gods had bound, would break free and the old gods would die by his teeth.
‘A man told me this story would bring me luck,’ said Snake in the Eye.
‘Did it?’
‘I met a useful fellow through it.’
‘This story is common to your people.’
‘Parts of it. They know their gods must die. The part about the slave girl and her sons is told in our family. It is passed down from my grandfather, I think.’
Loys took this in. The wolfman may have approached the emperor believing this tale to be true, believing he was a part of that destiny in some way. The chamberlain’s concealment of the wolfman alone marked him as important.
But the sky, the death of the rebel. How did that fit in? He would dearly love to have interviewed this wolfman.
‘He can speak, the wolfman?’
‘Yes. He is a Varangian but not of our army.’
‘I would like to find him.’
‘Is he not in the prison?’
‘He has escaped to the lower tunnels.’
‘He could be found,’ said Snake in the Eye.
‘How?’
‘You need the right trackers. Our Vikings are rare wolf hunters. You should hire a few and take them down there. They’d flush him out.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘If you want to, send for me at the Varangian camp. I am a terror to my enemies and will gladly escort you to the depths. I have men I can bring with me. One of them is a mighty man indeed. Ragnar, of the far north, newly come to the camp, the one who fought Arnulf in holmgang. He would find your wolf.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ said Loys.
‘I have given you a service,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘now will you repay it?’
‘What do you want?’
‘How do you remove an enchantment of…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘What? Impotence?’ Loys almost laughed. The boy had coloured to his boots.
‘Like that, yes. Not that, but like it.’
‘Of what then?’
The boy rocked back and forth, staring at the satyr as if he thought it might say what he could not.
‘It’s not manly for me to admit it.’
‘What are the effects of this enchantment?’
‘It is a battle fetter, so my father said, bestowed by Odin. The best and bravest warriors he wants for his own and afflicts them on the field of conflict so they cannot move, cannot fight or defend themselves. This is the fetter. I have a fetter on me.’
Loys smiled. ‘Not everything is an enchantment. Those who God made gentle cannot be unmade and reformed.’
‘I was not born gentle,’ said Snake in the Eye with a conviction that Loys found unpleasantly convincing. ‘I have a wolf inside me but he cannot get out.’
‘Perhaps he is content to stay where he is.’
Snake in the Eye clenched his fist and for a moment Loys thought the boy was going to hit him.
Loys put up his hands. ‘I cannot help you. I have never heard of this condition before.’
‘Then what of other afflictions? How do you remove a curse of the smallpox or of bad luck?’
‘The way to salvation of all sorts is through Christ,’ said Loys. ‘If you meddle with devils then devils will meddle with you. What is it you wear at your neck?’
‘A gift from my father, and to him from his father. It is a magical stone.’
‘What magic does it hold?’
‘Luck and defence from witches.’
‘To put your faith in such things is to put your faith in demons,’ said Loys.
‘It is a gift. A birthright. I cannot relinquish it.’
‘Then you have had my advice and rejected it,’ said Loys. ‘When you turn to Christ you will find all enchantments fall away. Magic, true magic, has no power against true faith.’
‘Then what of the emperor,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘and the powerful men who fear this sky? What of this city under a curse of black heavens? It has built the greatest houses to your God the world has ever seen and yet it labours under this. Fimbulwinter. Fimbulwinter!’
‘What is Fimbulwinter?’
‘The barren and frozen time before Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods. The end of the gods is happening here, so the men say, and the city will fall when it does.’
