Berserker (Omnibus) (3 page)

A spear clattered noisily on to the flagstoned pathway and both warriors ducked and withdrew from this open place.

The horn sounded the instruction to re-group, the job of pillage having been completed.

‘I dislike this raiding tactic as much as you,’ said Gotthelm. ‘But it’s your right to take: to take life, to take women, to take a child and sacrifice it. It’s your right, Harald.’

‘It’s my right to choose what I take, then.’

‘Frey’s phallus!’ moaned Gotthelm. ‘Too bloody innocent!’

Innocent.

As they rode, months later, through the cold lands of his home, this night of the full moon and the high, white clouds that rolled across the stars in gentle waves, so that fight and Gotthelm’s exasperated rebuke came back to him.

Innocent of faith and innocent of sex. But a warrior none the less, and fierce and bloodied, and very very proud!

The wolf stalked.

Harald sensed it, and with each hour, with each pause for rest as they urged their horses on through the long night, across moonlit ridges and through sombre woods filled with the screech of owls and less familiar night life, so the sensation of fear grew stronger.

At times Harald stopped and rose up in his stirrups, turned to stare into the land they had covered.

Light sparkled on a river – a shadow passed across that river, but perhaps just a cloud …

Trees lined the ridges in stark formation, reaching towards sky and earth; they seemed to move, to shift position as a restless sleeper shifts position during a haunted night. But just wind, perhaps. The gods were sleeping too, and surely had no enthusiasm for wandering abroad at this depressing time of year.

Something howled in the darkness. A dog? A wolf?

Tensely, Harald sat in the saddle and spurred his horse forwards.

He sensed the wolf, sensed the pursuer, but did not fully understand what that beast was, and why it stalked him. And yet it was there.

Twisting in the saddle he stared into the night.

Diamond eyes watched him as from a great distance; lost among the stars they seemed to flicker between the trees and the clouds, to rise from the earth and to recede from him. Watching.

Fear dried the wetness of his mouth, wetted the dryness of his palms. He rode on. The beast followed.

The wolf might not have been seen by human eye for it was not yet manifest in this fleshy, earthy world of sword and conquest. It pursued Harald from the nether world, running sleekly along the edge of the great chasm that led from the place of gods to the place of man. Its saliva was the wetness that fell on the young warrior’s brow; its breath was the cold wind that froze his bones and made him draw a short cloak about his thin body; its padding was the thunder of sky and earth; its howl was the scream with which Harald awoke from his dreams to find Sigurd Gotthelm pressing him gently back to the blanket, calming him, smiling warmly as he recognised the symptoms of a haunted man.

‘It pursues me, Sigurd.’

‘The wolf?’

Cold wind at the mention of the name. The stars above him seemed to wheel and revolve, as if dancing in ecstasy at the coming of winter. Tall, bare trees framed the sky as he stared upwards; clouds rippled across the stars, grey and black, chasing each other before the winds.

‘It pursues me; it follows me …’

‘You’re dreaming that’s all. There’s no wolf, merely a nightmare. You’re having a nightmare.’

‘It pursues me!’

His scream added to the noises of the night, the howls and wingbeats, the rustles and grunts of dying creatures.

‘You need rest, Harald. You need days of sleep and eating, long nights of loving and kissing. You need to get the taste of blood out of your mouth. I felt the same when I was a boy. The fear will pass. We’ll soon be a-slaughtering again.’

‘There is something wrong,’ Harald murmured to the shadowy face of his friend. Sigurd’s eyes, in the night, were dim white shapes, staring earnestly down; the fire-light caught the eyes redly, gave them the appearance of a demon’s.

Sigurd wiped the boy’s forehead, grinned (red flame on white teeth, the teeth of a wolf – Harald tensed).

‘Calm, boy. Keep calm. It’s just a dream.’

‘It pursues me. It’s no ordinary wolf. It comes from Hell, Sigurd. I know it, I sense it.’

‘A nightmare. Think of that woman you could have had but spared. Remember her? Think of her, and you’ll fall asleep with aggravation. What a waste …’

Before dawn they were riding. It was still dark. Harald turned in the saddle and stared behind him.

He heard the growl, smelled the urine stink of the great beast, saw its coalfire eyes blinking and surveying as it rested a moment in some woody recess of his haunted mind.

Sunlight spilt across the hills to the east; the trees became alive with fire, no longer black, pathetic skeletons, restlessly waiting for summer. Birds sang, but so few now, the hardy remnants of the summer flocks.

Sigurd had forged ahead, riding between the trees as they wound towards the final ridge before the tiny village of Unsthof, and then his father’s hold at Urlsgarde. The dawn light flashed off the metal of Sigurd’s shield and belt, and as the old warrior rode across a bare earth knoll, red cloak streaming behind him, so the light caught the gleaming facets of his helmet. Harald froze again, pulled his horse to a stop and stared with his heart thundering at the mysterious man ahead, at the helmet, the skull-like helmet with its drawings and carvings, and the frightening fact of its link with Sigurd Gotthelm’s own destiny.

Unable to shake the past few months from his mind, Harald reminisced again on the events of his first battle, and in particular on his meeting with the older Viking …

Sunlight glittered on a metal helmet.

Harald Swiftaxe dropped to a crouch behind a jutting boulder and slowly rose again to peer down the slope to the dark pool of water by whose softly lapping edges a pile of blue and red clothes lay scattered, as if they had been discarded in a great hurry.

Hot and bloody, sore, wounded, the warmth and stickiness of his own blood irritating him, Harald thought how truly inviting that pool looked.

But where was the owner of the pile of garments?

The helmet sat on the top of the leather jerkin, glinting and sparkling, a
large metallic skull, watching the countryside through its empty eye sockets; but beside it there was no weapon to be seen, no sword, no spear, no axe.

A thrill of fear passed through the young Viking and he cowered lower, touched the soreness of his shoulder where the Celtish sword had tried to hack off his arm before his own blade had sought and found his attacker’s heart.

He would not be good in a fight at the moment; he was weakened, and thirsty. The clothes by the pool were Norse, but there were so many different types of men fighting this war that it was not safe to call any man brother or friend until the heat of battle united them into a single war machine.

But that pool … it looked so good!

It was nearly midday. The sun was baking hot (a change from the depressing rain that usually thudded on to the saturated earth of this westernmost land of the continent). The main force of Gudrack’s men were camped some miles to the south, having left Harald behind when he had been struck down and left for dead.

Were there wolves here, he wondered? A wolf could smell blood a mile away, and no doubt they were already ravening and fighting over the spoils of the war, tearing the living limbs from the dying men who lay in the small valley to the south, among the burning timbers of the village that had been raided earlier.

How soon before they found Harald himself?

He could hear no howls or cries that he recognised as the hunting call of the great dog and wolf packs that struck such fear into the farmers of his own land.

The water …

Coolness, a chance to soak away his hurts …

That helmet!

Unlike any helmet he had ever seen, it tantalised in the way it watched him from the pool-side, blind eyes staring upwards hauntingly from the silver skull that in battle would completely encase the skull of the warrior who wore this strange protective garment.

Surely if the man was in the pool he was dead. The pool surface was quiet, almost gentle, and no man could remain submerged for so long.

And the rocks and gently sloping land around the water seemed free of any naked warrior, sleeping or crouching, waiting for an intruder …

The owner of the helmet, then, had been swimming and had chased some small animal across the rocks, and found his destiny at the end of a blood-encrusted Celtish sword.

It was a good enough argument for Harald. He stood and ran down the slope, crouched by the water and touched its coolness. He looked around, listening to the bird song and high-summer earth sounds.

Picking up the helmet he stood and stared at the strange and beautiful armour.

Like the helmet of a Norse king, and yet unlike any helmet he had ever seen on the heads of the warlords behind whom he ran into battle. The vault was divided into small partitions, small frames and richly decorated with drawings … vivid drawings, precise in their execution, again unlike any helm decoration he had seen on a warlord.

Here a man slew three bull-helmeted Angles … there a man (the same man) wrestled with a troll … here again the man recoiled from beneath the blow from a ragged and giant warrior who stood impaled on a spear … and there a wolf fought a bear, with tooth and claw, upright on its hind legs, snapping at the gaping mouth of the great shaggy beast.

Many frames were empty, bare metal reflecting the sunlight; dents and scars testified to the efforts of many a swordsman to split the softer tissue beneath the helm; the man, the wearer, had survived well in battle …

Unease caused icy fingers to clutch at Harald’s youthful heart. A warrior this unusual, this powerful, would surely not fall prey to a lone Celtish swordsman.

He looked around, still holding the helmet.

Nothing.

He stared into the pool, the quiet surface reflecting the rocks and trees of this peaceful part of the land.

With a sound like the rushing of a waterfall the giant man rose from the pool, casting the water aside, sending waves breaking across the yellowing grass that bordered the tiny lake.

Harald stood frozen and open-mouthed as the figure rose, almost stiffly, almost without effort, from deep in the pool. A tall, broad-shouldered man, aged, but full of strength; long blond hair and a short beard dripped water; water ran down the man’s body in great rivers, splashing back into the turbulent pool.

Deep, black eyes fixed Harald with an angry gaze. The man’s sword arm rose from the water and a short, scarred sword waved close to Harald’s throat.

‘Put down the helmet,’ said the man.

And Harald dropped the helm from fingers suddenly shaking.

The warrior stepped from the pool, shook his hair like a dog shakes its fur after swimming. Cold water drops rained across the younger warrior who stood his ground and stared at the Norseman.

Naked, the warrior was more than a head taller than Swiftaxe himself, but he seemed disinclined to battle, recognising a fellow countryman, recognising also, perhaps, the impetuous inquisitiveness of youth.

Still naked, the man squatted by his clothes and picked up the helmet, stared up at Swiftaxe.

‘Its eyes are my eyes. I’ve been watching you for some minutes. Are you badly hurt?’

A voice like gravel, but a warm voice. Harald dropped to a crouch and touched his shoulder where blood clotted and the flesh ached. ‘Not badly,’ he said. ‘But it hurts like … like …’

The warrior laughed, swept back his hair from a face as brown and ridged as oak.

‘Your first taste of the Celtish blade, I suppose.’

‘My first taste of blood,’ said Harald Swiftaxe. ‘I killed many.’

‘At least a hundred, no doubt.’ The warrior grinned.

‘I’m no Celt that I need to brag my death score.’

‘How many then?’

Abashed for a moment, but then feeling that even a single kill was worth a moment’s pride … ‘Three. It would have been more but I felt merciful.’

The older warrior laughed. ‘Mercy is the right of kings. These Celtish sword-sluts wouldn’t spare
you
, so don’t go being merciful. They’ll cut off your tail when your back turns. Or your manhood.’

Harald shivered at the thought. ‘I wouldn’t care for that, not at all.’

As if reading something into the expression on his face, or the tone of his voice, the older warrior chuckled. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never used your mightiest weapon! Don’t tell me that young fair-haired blood-arm is innocent! Never slain a beast in a Celtish slut’s cavern? Never chased the sleep from a Norse matron’s belly? Odin’s arse! I’d tie metal round it, if I were you. You haven’t lived boy. You haven’t known manhood yet!’

Too tired to object, Harald laughed with the other man. ‘I’m saving such pleasure for Elena. She’s my betrothed, and she’s waiting for me.’

‘Unless some Berserker gets to her first.’

‘She lives high in the hills of the northlands. No warrior in his right mind would venture so far away from decent action.’

‘Talking of which,’ said the warrior, changing the subject, ‘the action here lies towards the great central settlement of MacNeill. We’ll have the sword-slut eating worms before the sun sets tomorrow evening. But we have some catching up to do.’

He stood and dressed, while Harald stripped and briefly washed the blood from his aching arm and shoulder. The older man helped him bind the wound, and then he pulled on his skull-like helmet and regarded Harald through the eye-sockets. He seemed to become more serious for a moment, as if – when encased within the helm – he was possessed of some darker spirit that destroyed his humour and set his sword hand itching, ready to strike at anything that moved.

But he said, ‘My name is Sigurd Gotthelm, and I allow none to touch my helmet. I shall spare you because of your innocence and pleasantness, and
because I want to see you fight. But most of all,’ he went on, his voice rising in humour, ‘I want to see you bloody that innocent axe you keep so quiet!’ He laughed. ‘So we’ll go together, young fair-haired blood-arm, scrawny-figured, blue-eyed virgin with his three mighty kills … we’ll go together and poke our swords up MacNeill’s guts.’