Berserker (Omnibus) (6 page)

Bluetooth slapped his son on the back and hugged him again. ‘You killed many Celtish dogspits. Many. I can see by your eyes, your scars.’

He touched the double scar on Harald’s cheek. Harald drew up and grinned. ‘Not many,’ he confessed, ‘but enough. I fought beside Gudrack at least twice, and my battle cry would have made you wince to hear it, it was so full of anger and death.’

‘You must tell us all your adventures over a fine meal. We’re eating poor scrap at the moment, but we’ll soon have a goat on the spit.’ Bluetooth’s eyes flickered towards the leaning, silent Gotthelm. ‘You are …?’

‘This is my good friend Sigurd Gotthelm,’ said Harald. ‘A jarl from the
mountains south of Hringar, and a very fine warrior. He is honoured to be in the hold, but he brings honour by his sword and his spear.’

‘And mystery by his helmet,’ said Bluetooth, staring at the strange metallic skull that encased the old warrior’s cranium. ‘And death by his blood unless we get him tended.’

They helped Gotthelm into the small hut that ran alongside the main hall; here there were beds, fine wooden benches covered with deep layers of bear fur and horse leather. Gotthelm lay and allowed a young bondmaiden to strip off his clothes, caressing his body as well as the wound. He winked at Harald and grinned, and Harald’s fear for the man’s life swiftly subsided.

‘She’s the daughter of a Saxon thrall, given to me in payment for hunting down the Saxon himself when he killed a
gestir
at Trollestad. If she aids his recovery I shall give her her freedom – if your friend doesn’t desire her.’

Harald laughed. Such generosity was quite unlike his father, but his father’s pleasure at his return was probably very great.

Something about old Bluetooth’s attitude, however, filled Harald with unease. The man, though obviously overwhelmed and happy, seemed to walk beneath a dark cloud; there were shadows on his face that were the shadows of fear and stress.

And when he found out about Unsthof, and the slaughter of the people there, it might be even worse. Had they been attacked here by the same band of Berserkers?

Sudden fear gripped Harald’s heart. Elena! Had she survived the rape of Unsthof only to find death during a later attack on Urlsgarde?

‘Elena …’ he said loudly, but his father, guessing at his son’s anxiety, said, ‘She’s well. Tomorrow we shall ride to Unsthof and bring bawdy old Bloodaxe and his talespinning wench to our hall.’

‘Bloodaxe is dead,’ said Harald quickly, hardly daring to watch his father’s face. He was relieved, as he spoke, relieved that Elena was safe. But he was terrified now, of what his father would do.

In the event his father did nothing, merely stared. He said, ‘Dead? Bloodaxe? How can that be? We were only hunting together four days ago …’

In the quiet of the hut, while in the main hall the voices grew louder and more excited as preparations for feasting began, Harald told of what they had found over the rise, at the tiny community.

Bluetooth’s face drained of all blood and his eyes closed. He seemed to stoop a little, to grow older.

‘I would not have blinked five years ago,’ he said. ‘Death meant so little when death was so much around us. But now … Bloodaxe … my old friend, so cruelly dead.’

‘We know who did it,’ said Harald.

Bluetooth’s eyes were heavy in the darkness, but watched the youth with
obvious pain, obvious expectancy. When Harald told of the dead Berserker Bluetooth tensed, then uttered a fearful scream, of desperation perhaps, but mostly of anger. The cry woke Gotthelm who watched from his bed, brushing away the gentle caress of the bondgirl. Harald backed away from the fiercesome man, but Bluetooth, rather than striking the nearest object as Harald had expected, merely turned and walked away, glancing towards the strange fire near the palisade, and vanishing into the glare of the hall.

Again Harald watched the fire outside. Those shapes – large men, fur-clad and not of the hold – who were they?

‘They came to the hold yesterday evening,’ said a voice behind him, and he turned quickly.

‘Elena!’

For a moment they clung to each other, Elena sobbing and Harald, conscious of but unembarrassed by Gotthelm’s grinning voyeurism, closed his eyes and hugged her until she gasped. She was so soft, and pressed against him their bodies seemed to melt together. When they parted and looked at each other they didn’t release their grip. Her fingers touched his face, and two ugly scars, and his own touch wandered from her mouth to her neck, and quickly, tentatively to her breasts, pressing against their softness, exploring the flesh that he longed to kiss without the encumbrance of her clothing.

She backed away and smiled, blue eyes alive with pleasure, long fair hair framing her face and shining with the distant firelight. ‘My father would go mad if he saw you do that.’

Harald froze, but managed to keep the smile on his face. ‘Elena …’

Before he could bring himself to tell her she kissed him again, a long and lingering embrace, her tongue darting into his mouth so that he jumped with surprise, but clutched her tightly, hands gripping her with his passion that rose and surged and forced its way between them.

He couldn’t tell her, not now, not yet. She hadn’t heard him tell his own father, and it would be so cruel to destroy her first moment of pleasure in a year (he hoped her first moment, at least) with the tragic news.

They stood in the doorway and watched the cloudy skies, felt the cold air dance before hot gusts from the fire; the smell of meat was heavy on the wind, mouth-watering; he could smell sour ale and that was mouth-watering too. A goat shrieked as it was slaughtered and he watched, his arms around Elena’s waist, as the carcass was dragged into the hall.

Despite the festivity, the pall of gloom was almost tangible. Men of the hold stood in small groups or alone and watched the gathering of strangers around the fire, the invited guests who were nevertheless being afforded the barest minimum of hospitality. There were so few women in sight that Harald wondered if some plague had hit the settlement, but he guessed that with
strangers inside the palisade the women were crouched in the corners of their huts, fearing for their honour and their menfolk.

And gradually, as Harald sensed the unease about him, watched the superficial activity and the underlying fear of the group around the fire, so he came to realise who those unwelcome guests were …

‘Thor’s cry! Berserks!’

Elena slapped a hand across his mouth and her eyes widened with sudden fear. She pulled him back into the hut and eased the wooden door closed; Gotthelm shifted on his bed and tried to ease himself up.

‘Harald … are they out there?’

Elena looked at each man with a warning frown. ‘Keep quiet,’ she urged. ‘If we leave them alone they’ll do us no harm!’

Gotthelm laughed sourly. ‘Berserks? Love plays tricks with your senses. They may leave you in peace, or they may not, but whatever you do or don’t do, they’ll spill blood if the mood takes them.’

Harald glanced at Gotthelm and by the expression on his face tried to tell the man to keep quiet. Gotthelm subsided and closed his eyes. The bondgirl climbed on to the pallet with him and began to kiss his forehead. Gotthelm sighed with pleasure and began to take the girl very seriously, notwithstanding the vicious and deep gash in his left chest.

Harald turned back to Elena and took her by the arm, pulled her back to the door and peered out at the six shapes, still sitting peacefully by the fire.

What hatred he felt for the beasts! What loathing. To think that Elena had escaped their butchery by mere chance, visiting the hold as she so often had visited it to keep his mother company, weaving and embroidering during the long and lonely nights. If she had come tomorrow night she would never have come at all, but her mutilated body would still have been staring at Harald as an after-image of horror and shock …

What they had done at Unsthof made them no human brother of his, no northman blood kin … they were lower than wolves, less than a broken-legged pig … they did not deserve to live.

And here they were, feasting within the defensive walls of his father’s hold, burning his wood, eating the flesh of his soil, enjoying those protective comforts of the fortified settlement, and perhaps …

Perhaps growing towards one of those unpredictable and frightening rages that possessed them as a group, sending them whirling and shrieking, slashing and killing, oblivious of wounds, invulnerable to all but a mortal blow.

They were quiet now, but for how long?

In the name of Ull, why had they been let in? Wasn’t this settlement protected against just such roving bands of killers as these?

Why had they been let in?

Elena sensing the question, placed a finger across his lips and whispered to
him. ‘They came first several months ago. In the height of winter they were cold and starving and they seemed calm. Your father let them in and they respected his hospitality, staying until they were strong and then leaving. They came again and again, each time for just a few days as they wandered the lands hereabouts, and they never abused the settlement in any way. This time it seemed pointless to argue, as it seemed pointless the last time they were here, but they brought with them a smell of blood when they came last night, and the hold is terrified; some of us sense they are close to a blood rage, and none of us want that. So we’re trying to keep as quiet and as normal as possible. With luck they’ll be gone tomorrow …’

‘With bad luck so will we,’ said Harald. ‘Why did my father ever agree to let them inside the gates? He knows the sort of animals those creatures are!’

‘They have a power over him,’ said Elena sadly, staring straight at Harald as if the directness of her gaze and her statements could alleviate the shock. ‘They seem to possess him, to grip his soul. Your father knows it and it weakens him, makes him disgusted with himself, but he is the
hersir
and none would ever dare to rebuke him. He needs you, Harald … help him …’

Harald nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He stared at the fire, at the silent Berserks, and wondered what sensations of the night, of the coming winter, of the future ran through their blood-crazy brains.

‘We must get them outside the hold,’ he said.

‘Why? They’ll go of their own accord before long.’

Would they, he wondered? Perhaps Unsthof was just the beginning; perhaps they had no intention of leaving Urlsgarde standing this time. They had overwintered here, and after a summer of killing and fighting, who knew where, they had returned as the first winter winds began to blow, cold and mournful. There was no telling how they might react, how they might have changed during the past few months.

And they had lost one of their band during the fury at Unsthof, and that might be preying on their minds; if they had any feelings at all those feelings might have been for revenge.

And yet …

There were only six of them, and from what Harald had seen it took a while for them to invoke the spirits that came from Odin, to rise to that great rage: a blood fury could be spontaneous at the smell of blood, but before battle they had to
work
into that rage, as if the possessing spirits had departed for a while, as if Odin, fighting and killing through the bear men he owned, tired easily of their filthy games and withdrew into the stars to rest and love, returning only when his appetite for chaos was sharp again.

These men were calm. It might be possible to attack and to kill them now, when their strength was normal, their spirits the normal dulled spirits of the lumbering human beasts they were.

As he watched them Harald felt an uncontrollable anger rise within him, saw red, the red of blood, heard sound, the sound of screams, the screams of the people he had known and respected at the farming village of Unsthof. Again, the tattered body of Bjorn the Axe haunted his mind’s eye. The grinning, dead face of the woman on the spear seemed to speak in a monotonous, Hel-guided curse – kill them, she said, revenge us, strike while Odin rests, use the strength of the wolf to counter the might of the Bear god … strike them … revenge us …

Harald’s head spun. Elena drew back from him, struck by his suddenly distorted features, the feral anger that brought a growl to his throat, a blood-light to his eyes.

‘Harald …’ she began, but he waved her silent, and then turned on her, pushed her into the corner and snapped, ‘Stay there. Don’t move!’

Anger took his arms and legs and he walked, slowly, deliberately, to where his horse stood feeding at a low wooden trough; its saddle was still in place, the large leather bags still hanging across the pommel.

Reaching into one of the bags he drew out the bloody rag and the bulky object it concealed. Without unwrapping the cloth he walked to the fire and stood a few feet away, staring at the six Berserks.

Huddled together, crouched and bent towards the warmth, they seemed unfiercesome beasts. Shaggy hair shook as heads turned towards him; bodies tensed, and the thick fur wrappings they wore rippled and shifted as hands crept towards bone-scarred metal blades. Eyes watched him, mouths chewed, shapes stiffened … they remained silent.

‘I was at Unsthof,’ said Harald quietly. ‘I saw what you did.’

The nearest beast-man glanced at the others then back at Harald. He was red haired and wild, his eyes spread far apart and pig-like in his face; his nose and lips were thick and wet, and he drew an arm across his jowls to dry his features. Grease stained his beard, dripped from the piece of meat he held on to his thick leggings.

‘I saw what you did,’ said Harald.

Still silence.

Deliberately, then knowing that he would provoke them to anger but feeling unconcerned by the foolhardiness of the action, feeling unafraid of the consequences, he unwrapped the severed head and held it by its greasy, blood-matted hair. The head swung in his grasp, the dulled eyes regarding the eyes of its friends, and perhaps in their minds the dead lips spoke to them for they all cried out in anger, and cast their food on to the flames, drawing swords and tensing, waiting for the word to kill.