Berserker (Omnibus) (2 page)

Holdstock’s last sequence, Merlin Codex, comprising
Celtika
(2001),
The Iron Grail
(2002) and
The Broken Kings
(2006), the Merlin Codex is a complex and hauntingly surreal reworking of some central motifs from the Mythago Wood tales into a rendering of European mythology as a whole into a kind of temporal labyrinth, with lines of story interweaving through time. The central drama whose ramifications echo through the worlds of the series is the conflict between Jason and Medea, underlier figures who shape the complex epic. The central character, an immortal Merlin, serves as both victim and guide, whose quest for a primordial riven family – Jason’s abducted children – knits the sequence together.

In his last completed book,
Avilion
(2009), Holdstock returns directly to the central knot of story of
Mythago Wood
and
Lavondyss
, continuing the Huxley family tale through deaths and resurrections that amount in the end, as does his work as a whole, to a grave-song for England, though the wood continues.

In this volume a different Holdstock takes centre stage, the author (as Chris Carlsen) of the Berserker series of fantasies,
Shadow of the Wolf
(1977),
The Bull Chief
(1977) and
The Horned Warrior
(1979). In 1977 these tales may have seemed brutal and even thoughtless, but with the benefit of hindsight, they read very differently now, and we’re lucky to have a chance to appreciate them within the frame of Holdstock’s work as a whole. The protagonists of the sequence, at the heart of which broods a darkly conceived King Arthur, are like raw heroes out of the heart of Mythago Wood; their resemblance to traditional Sword-and-Sorcery figures can now be seen as almost accidental. The Berserker books lack the subtleties of
Mythago Wood
, but in a sense they supply a deep backstory for that tale, and for everything else Holdstock would write. They are the bone shop. It is a thrill to encounter them properly at last.

For a more detailed version of the above, see Robert Holdstock’s author entry in
The
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
:
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/holdstock_robert_p

Some terms above are capitalised when they would not normally be so rendered; this indicates that the terms represent discrete entries in
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
.

This, the first, for Angus Wells

Berserker – A Norse warrior who, in the sight of battle, would fill with a frenzied and irresistible fury; a devotee of the God Odin, from whom he gained his power; a ferocious fighter, as strong as a bear, immune to both fire and steel.

The wolf came.

Out of darkness, out of hell, out of the fire-licked country of the dead, stalking through the night of winter’s snow, through the struggling forest, among the stark, black rocks of the northern wastes, running in pursuit, panting as the warm-blood vision of its destiny drew it onwards … out of the God Sky, out of the rolling, booming, screaming land of ghosts, out of the past the wolf came nearer.

Huge, and even darker in the night than in the day when its darkness was almost absolute; eyes, in the moonlight, were like twin diamonds glittering in the loping form of the beast. Muscles, beneath black fur, rippled and tensed, blackly, carried the beast across the northlands, scenting, following, knowing – with its animal instinct – that it was not yet ready to meet with its destiny, but sensing that the time was approaching!

Sent by a god, it would soon enjoy the bloody taste of battle, mortal battle, tooth and sword, claw and shield.

Its prey was ahead of it, in the highlands, among the scattered villages and the bitter winds.

Unsuspecting!

He was called Harald Swiftaxe, but he might have been called the Innocent. There was blood on his sword, and on the scarred blade of the bearded axe his father, Erik Bluetooth, had given him. And the skin of his arms and chest had been several times parted and mended after the frenzy of battle.

And yet, he was Innocent.

At eighteen years of age he could not conceal the smile of pride, the grin of triumph; at times, as he rode with his companion through the thin, dying forests of the mountains, he laughed aloud, shaking back his long yellow hair, which he wore loose, and letting his cry pierce the foliage and drift into the blue sky beyond.

He was a warrior now, and felt the part, even if his youthfulness was still all too apparent. He was tall, and lean, and his face, framed by silky yellow hair, was sparse of beard, though what grew, grew unmolested, for he hoped soon to sport a thick moustache and neatly pointed beard as did his father, the great Bluetooth of the Ironside campaign against Cormac, a generation before.

Wearing a loose green kirtle, and tight blue breeches, with tall, calf-skin shoes (very warm, very sweaty) Harald Swiftaxe was a strange mixture of styles, but very individual. More important were his weapons, and these he sensed and he knew were impressive. A short, broad sword hung in its wood and leather sheath from his low-slung sword belt; occasionally he drew the blade and watched the writhing snakes of the centre of the broad steel weapon, the marks of the pattern welding that had produced the splendid sword. Brass decorated the pommel, and the grip was carved from the bone horn of a great bull, and the power of the bull reached into the hand of the wielder when the sword was used in battle.

He was shieldless, his two shields having been hacked to pieces within moments of the first skirmish, but he still carried a short throwing spear, strapped across his back; this he used to thrust where his sword was good only for hacking.

Beside the sword he carried his father’s gift to him – the bearded axe that Harald had proved so agile with, and though he used it rarely, his own runes clustered beneath those of his father, near the hilt, before the great silvered blade narrowed to its razor edge.

Festooned with weapons, aching with the several wounds he had received, Harald felt every bit the warrior he had become, and thus his occasional cry of triumph, of joy, loud in the still forest air, frightening to bird and beast, and probably not a little startling to the youth’s companion who rode ahead of him.

But his companion was silent at the outbursts, merely turning in his saddle occasionally and shaking his head, a thin grin of amusement touching his lips. He was too old and too blooded in body and mind to see the humour in what they had done, or the pleasure in any single battle among the many he had fought. Still, this silent man made no effort to stifle the youthful enthusiasm behind him. He remembered, perhaps, his own first journey across the wild seas to the ragged, fern covered coasts of the bitter lands to the south. He remembered, perhaps, his own screams of delight as the flesh had parted before his blade, and the shaking legs of virgins before his lust.

Harald Swiftaxe was remembering too!

He slapped the short sword that hung across the saddle, touched the dents in the haft of his bearded axe, spread his hands across the shifting muscles of his horse’s shoulders and sensed, in their power, something of his own power – the power he had used as he had wielded sword and axe, and laid waste the lives of warriors, both old and young.

If it ever occurred to him that he was lucky to be alive he never brooded upon the thought. He had been on the winning side, and most of all, he had been alive at the end of the invasion. The men of the great town, that had been called Dublin, had fallen back and Gudrack, the invading king, had
triumphed. The Innocent had survived to return to his northern hold and relate his initiation to his father.

How proud his family would be, how glad to see him! How his mother would weep! (Had she wept while he had been away? Had she held her youngest son – so like Harald in looks and spirit – and dreamed of her eldest?) His father would sneer, of course, and belittle him, but all in the cause of welcoming him as a man.

And Elena, lovely Elena … she would be there too, welcoming him as more than a man! Before he left the hold again he would finally take her as his wife, bonded to her as he had promised, and as their parents had encouraged them.

First, though, there would be the welcome (he could imagine it all!) and the accounting for himself. He would not brag, of course. Men did not brag of personal battle; that was the sort of indulgence that the Celtish peoples practised, expanding their prowess out of all proportion. There would be no such exaggeration when Harald related his adventures. Why bother? He had fought as hard as any man, he had killed as hard, and for as good a cause; and Odin had smiled upon him in the form of his silent companion, the old southerner, Sigurd Gotthelm, for the two men – becoming friends before the great battle at Dublin – had become blood brothers in the course of slaughter; they had fought side by side in the fiercest part of the fray, where the numbers of the Celts had been highest, and the flashing of swords in the weak sunlight had been like the glittering of a fierce, sunlit sea.

Time and again Harald had deflected the spear or the knife that was speeding towards the older man; time and again Harald had turned to see a barbarian giant toppling in death, face creased in agony as a sword blade probed from neck through mouth; and behind the corpse, shaking his head and grinning: Sigurd Gotthelm.

They had fought a war of conquest, a war that would continue as long as the people of the southern lands clung to their territory of rock and stone. In the earth was their heritage, and few men would part with that heritage without first leaving their blood in the soil. The battle would not be finally won until the Norse blood ran in Celtish veins as well as across the Hibernian earth.

He was proud, young Harald Swiftaxe, of his part in the fighting. He was proud of the killing he had done. And somewhere deep inside him there lurked a lesser pride, a pride that he would not acknowledge aloud, and yet which set him apart from many others of his own age, and race, and warlike position.

He was proud of the killing he had
not
committed.

In the sword of Swiftaxe, Odin was a merciful god. Odin was always as angry or as merciful as the warriors who wielded metal in his name, and it
pleased Harald to think that Odin might not be unhappy with the young warrior’s compassion.

There had been the pagan monk, cowering in a brick grotto below the ruined chapel where he worshipped his one god. So young, so innocent of war, and instead of screaming abuse and chanting the weird spells of his solitary god, he had watched the smoke and blood-encrusted figure of the Viking through tear-filled eyes and finally had bowed his head, waiting for the death-blow.

Harald had leaned his sword against the man’s neck, and some primitive impulse had been urging him to strike the head from the shoulders; and yet …

He had spared the holy man.

The monk had looked up at him and puzzlement had creased his face in an almost comical fashion. He had made the strange cross sign, and Harald had tensed, waiting for some magic effect, but nothing occurred. The monk had spoken incomprehensible words to him. A question?

‘I shall spare your life,’ Harald had said. ‘If that’s what you’re asking me. I can’t kill a man who wields trust and love instead of a sword.’

Backing out of the small grotto he had paused, for a moment, and wondered if he was right to spare this
Christian
.

Later, retiring hurt from a skirmish, he had watched from some high rocks as three monks raped and slaughtered a young Celtish girl by the banks of a winding, red-stained river. Too tired, too hungry to attack them, he had crawled away and wondered at what he had seen.

And later still, recovered and running through a small town, sword in one hand and a fire-brand in the other, he had found himself alone with a screaming woman, a woman who was both young and yet experienced, because she clutched a child to her breast and cowered away from the lean warrior who approached her. Fire-brand dropped behind him, sword held towards her, as he had reached down and torn the woman’s child from her arms, and then her rough woollen robe from her plump body. She had frozen, in shock perhaps or hope that her submission would earn her the right to live. Full breasts, not sagged from their nourishing of the child, and a thick, handsome waist … he had stood above her and stared at her, and his desire had increased with every racing heartbeat, every wafting scent of her body odours, every glance to her slowly parting thighs.

She spoke strange words – like the monk’s words – and again he felt he understood her. Her knees had drawn up, and her white belly shook as she invited him to be gentle and to spare her all but his rape.

But he had backed away.

In the doorway he stopped and watched as she gathered her robe about her, clutched the screaming child to her body, and raced into the shadow of
a large, metal cauldron. He had burned the house, standing in the flickering light, breathing the flesh-stinking smoke, listening to the screams of the dying and suffering, the cries and shouts of his own men, and had watched the woman slip from the hut to vanish into the darkness.

A hand on his shoulder!

Whirling, bringing up his sword to hack at the other man, he had only just managed to stop himself from killing; Gotthelm stood there, breathing heavily, bleeding from a vicious wound across his left cheek, below the face-guard of his strange, skull-like silver helmet. The man stank of blood and excrement; his hands shook as he touched Harald and smiled.

‘The young Innocent,’ he said, mockingly, but grinning again. ‘You spared that woman. Why?’

‘Why not? I have Elena at home, in the hills, and she is everything I need in a woman.’

A group of Celtish farmers ran past them, pursued by a shrieking Norseman who gave up the chase and darted into the blazing house that Harald had just left. A moment later he appeared again, looking around, searching through smoke-darkened eyes for something to kill.