Berserker (Omnibus) (62 page)

But none made a move to revenge the dead Belgae.

Vertingoris said, ‘In truth I have never entertained a ghost before. A very solid, and very powerful ghost, I must say.’

Swiftaxe laughed. ‘I am a ghost inasmuch as I am less than the man I could be. I intend to change that in the circle of ancient stones.’

Happier now, the Chieftain leaned back on his haunches. ‘Less than the man you could be, and yet look at you. Ten like you behind me and I could sweep the Legions from these lands …’

‘And from the whole island, and from Gaul,’ said Swiftaxe grinning. ‘I am not
that
much of a warrior. With my axe I am a demon incarnate … you have seen that. But an arrow in my eye will still hit at the life in me.’

Vertingoris sighed and drained his beaker of wine. ‘Ghost or not, you are welcome in this fortress, and welcome to stay as long as you will. The circle of stones lies two days from here, and you must pass a garrison to reach it. We shall accompany you if you wish …’

‘Not necessary,’ said Swiftaxe quickly. He was still shaken and shocked by the speed with which the bear had possessed his limbs and made him the awful force of violence that he sought to destroy. His mind was filled with the urgency of reaching the stones, and of breaking this curse! He disliked any thought of drawing attention to himself by riding with a large band of men.

Vertingoris nodded. ‘Feel under no obligation to make haste with your departure.’

‘I am grateful. We all are. But we shall leave at dawn.’

As good as his word, Swiftaxe roused the deeply sleeping forms of Gryddan and Edwynna as a pale, grey light outside the small window of their cubicle told of the rising of the sun, behind the clouds and foul elements.

It was trickling with rain as Swiftaxe, his cloak wrapped tightly about him, led the horses from the stabling pens and walked them quietly among the still sleepy chickens that wandered the fort at will. Dogs barked, straining at leather leashes to chase at the Berserker’s heel; horses kicked and whickered in the high eaves of their night places, close to the houses of the warriors they proudly carried. Women walked about inside the palisade, between water-troughs and coops, their hair still mussed from the night, their faces sleepy and dazed.

As Swiftaxe mounted his horse the distant sound of iron on iron told of the forge opening up for its day’s work, repairing tools and honing blades.

Edwynna yawned mightily, then grinned as Gryddan helped her on to her mount. She was fresher, now, and the colour was back in her cheeks. She carried a large pack of food, Vertingoris’ gift to them.

The Chieftain was still asleep. Long into the dark hours Swiftaxe had heard him telling story after story of his hunting days, his words getting more and more slurred as the imported Roman wine – taken with great bravado from the garrison, of course – addled his thoughts and senses.

The gate was opened for them by grey-eyed, exhausted men, who carried just thin spears and broad, wicker shields. They waved good-bye to the guests, and Edwynna waved back. But Swiftaxe himself rode hard across the ramparts, to the shallower slopes leading down to the river and the protection of the woodlands.

For the rest of the day they followed the shallow waters, sometimes riding along the bank, other times splashing through the icy flow itself. They ate frequently, almost without sense, so unused were they to having food. By the morning of the second day, after breakfasting, the pouch was empty. Edwynna looked mournful, but they were full, and feeling strong, and the stone circle should be within their sight before this day was out.

They crept past the Roman garrison, a small fort built of wood and mounted behind some shallow earthworks. It seemed undermanned, most of the garrison probably out on patrol. Without incident the three of them passed beyond the fort and to the east, and soon they came to the rolling
downs and bleak landscape that Swiftaxe remembered from a time, in another age, when he had ridden this way.

It was dusk when the Berserker rode through a dense thicket of gnarled trees growing from rocky, crumbling ground, and rode out on to the gentle, wind-swept downs on which his destination had been built. On the ridges and higher ground on all sides he could see the barrows and humps of ancient graves, the guardians of the stones, perhaps. Distantly, deeper in the gathering darkness than the riders, a cluster of lights told of a settlement gathering in its skirts for the night.

The trees behind him rustled and creaked in the wind; the druid grunted as he guided his horse out of the woodland and on to the plain, and his exhalation of pleasure culminated in an incoherent invocation to one of his gods, a thanks for a difficult journey almost accomplished. When Edwynna, breathing hard and stroking the heaving neck of her mount, was also alongside, Swiftaxe pointed the way across the hills.

‘Not far,’ he said. ‘These horizon tombs are familiar to me. We shall see the circle of stones when we ride over the ridge ahead of us.’

He kicked his horse and the animal galloped forward.

In just a few minutes they gazed down at the shadowy ruins of an amazing structure.

It defied the powers of reason to try and imagine how these giant stones had been erected into a ring of henges. Magic was the only answer that made any sense. But even Gryddan exhaled in awe as the three of them approached the silent megaliths, and were affected by the power and the mystery of the place.

Black in the dusk light, with an inner ring of smaller stones visible through the narrow channels in the henges, and a towering henge visible within the very centre of the structure, the building looked like no temple or monument that existed anywhere else in the tribal lands of the Britons.

‘A gateway,’ breathed the druid. ‘The biggest I have seen. I do not know if my simple calling spell will be enough for you, Swiftaxe. This place is … it’s so
big
!’

They dismounted and walked to the outer stones, touching the cold surfaces, feeling the graininess of the rock, and scraping with their knives at the grey mould that grew there. They walked around the vast circle, almost afraid to glance into the inner rings, to where many stones lay fallen and half-buried in the grass.

The southern edge of the outer ring was collapsed, the great lintels having tumbled to the inside, and the standing stones now leaning heavily forward if not fully demolished. Gryddan thought he saw signs of some attempt to drag the stones out. ‘To break the gateway,’ he said. ‘But I doubt that they succeeded. And look. I doubt if they survived, whoever they were.’

A skull, half-buried in the grass, near to a fallen megalith, watched them from an older time.

Edwynna laughed suddenly, and ran to a stone in the middle of the circle. She jumped on to it and raised her arms, twirling round so that her cloak flew.

Immediately a biting wind swirled between the stones and caught her hair and her cloak, made her scream with the sudden cold shock. She jumped from the stone and cowered, staring upwards into the heavens. ‘Someone pushed me,’ she said. ‘Something pushed me … a great hand, on my chest … it pushed me off …’

Gryddan growled at her. ‘That was me,’ he said. ‘Respect the stones. They will not respect you, otherwise.’ He glanced pointedly at the skull.

‘I can waste no more time,’ said Swiftaxe. ‘The last time I was here a man tricked me and frustrated my chances of calling up the creatures that live here.’

‘There is no one to trick you now, Swiftaxe. Edwynna! Leave the circle.’ The old man looked at the Berserker carefully. ‘Be in no great hurry, my friend. We shall be outside the ring of stones, and will be here when you return.’

Swiftaxe smiled and unbuckled his cloak, passing it to the old man, who accepted it across his arm.

The Horned Warrior looked up into the cloudy skies, then removed his stub-horned helmet from his dank hair, placed it on the ground. He unhooked his great axe and swung it down so the blade buried itself deeply in the turf.

Edwynna’s lithe form vanished through the narrow space between two rocks, and Swiftaxe was alone once more, in the gateway to those who in other times were called the Dark Ones.

He went to the middle of the circle and dropped to his haunches, fingers touching the dewy turf, eyes alive for movement, ears listening above the noise of wind for sounds that might tell of treachery.

As it grew darker so he decided it was time.

Aloud, nervously, he spoke the words that Gryddan had taught him. They rolled easily from his tongue, over and over as he repeated them. As he spoke so the bear in his head made itself known for the first time in ages, crawling forward, red-eyed and white-toothed, roaring its indignation.

The powerful human forced it back, and laughed to think that soon he would be free of this northern ghost!

He went on saying the words:

The stones became just dark-grey shapes across a dark-grey sky, as the veil of night covered the land more finally, and the storm-laden clouds built up overhead ready to let loose their fury on the hills and woodlands below.

Quite suddenly, when his concentration had wandered just a little, it began. His heart stammered with shock as he felt the presence all around him of powerful entities, watching him.

Again he spoke the words of the calling spell, and his eyes darted from towering rock to towering rock, scanning the narrow gaps between them for a sign of those who regarded him.

As he twisted about on his haunches, his eyes came to rest on the fallen stone, and his stomach turned over with what he saw.

The stone was moving!

Eyes wide, skin freezing, voice now silent, Swiftaxe watched the circle of standing stones. The great, enigmatic blocks of dark rock were slowly changing shape. Huge eyes watched him from the dark faces of the stones; mouths parted to breathe the cold air and perhaps taste the moisture that hung heavy on the wind. The stones began to sway as the creatures emerged from them, and Swiftaxe saw bulky legs and thickly ridged arms, bodies that were scale-covered and others that were fur-covered. Jewels sparkled, blues and greens, and from the enormous head of one of these rock-beasts grew twisting, branched antlers that at once reminded Swiftaxe of the god Cernunnos, but which were unlike the antlers of any stag he had ever seen.

The Berserker said nothing, did nothing. He remained crouched, somewhere between ecstasy and mortal fear, watching these strange beings as they silently swayed and shuffled, regarding him through the darkness. He could hear their breathing, smell the sweetness of their odour. The air seemed to burn with some strange force; his skin tingled, his hair seemed to rise unnaturally from his head. He smelled flower odours, and the sort of perfumes he associated with spring. He heard a deep and sonorous beating sound, the hearts of these creatures, pumping as one, reverberating through the earth on which the tiny mortal cowered.

Uneasy at the silence, Swiftaxe longed to speak, to make his intentions known, but his tongue was locked by fear, the fear of losing them back to the grey and silent rock should he insult them with his forwardness.

Then a voice spoke from his left, a deep voice, but soft, the words sounding like the breath of the wind: ‘Who calls us?’

And then a second voice, from the other side of the circle. ‘Who disturbs us?’

And a third, from in front of him. ‘Who summons us to the gate?’

And behind him, an angry voice. ‘Make yourself known to us.’

The Berserker felt a cold hand grip his entrails, and the sweat ran free from his face as he realised he stood to lose all he had achieved if he used inappropriate or hostile words.

‘I am Caylen Swiftaxe, known as the Horned Warrior. As you see me I am in my third incarnation in bodily form and I seek to make it my last. A demon, whom some call a god, torments me. I seek an end to his curse.’

‘Too fast, too fast,’ said the first voice, and Swiftaxe looked to his left where the great black shape shifted on the ground, watching him through eyes that never blinked; he thought he could see hands almost as broad as his shoulders held, palms flat, against a scaly chest, a strange position to crouch.

He asked, ‘Are you those who will be known as the Dark Ones?’

The horned being stamped a foot nervously, and breathed out heavily, sounding just like a stag at bay. ‘We are the
Cynegesa
, and we are older than the beings which call themselves Man. We were here when this land was covered over in forest, and only wild animals roamed its trackways. We were here when the fur-covered creatures you hunt and eat were not yet brought into existence, when scaled creatures dominated the lands and grew to vast sizes. These things are beyond your comprehension, and your knowledge, but they will not forever remain so. Soon, within a few hundred of your generations, it will be understood how old we truly are, and how long we have been here. We have seen the growth of gods, and the death of them. We have seen the coming of races and the passing of them. We have seen the acquiring of knowledge, and the losing of it. We are powerless to interfere, for they are things that relate to your world, and to your race, and we are a race and a world apart from yours. This gateway, and others like it, which have stood in one form or another since we first came here, these are our only contact with you.’

Swiftaxe strained to see the full circle of the
Cynegesa
. His heart was racing, and he felt pangs of apprehension for they did not seem to be responding to him in the way he wanted.

He said, ‘I have travelled through three lives, and across many thousands of miles to find you; I need your help, for it is a god that I must destroy, a god who haunts me. No human power can do that. Will you do it for me?’

There was a sound like a gale, blowing hard and merciless about the outside of the stones. Swiftaxe felt his blood chill, but kept his eyes on the swaying creature before him.