Berserker (Omnibus) (7 page)

The Berserker nearest Harald didn’t move; he watched not the head but the arrogant youth who held it, and something in his face told Harald that he would survive this encounter but that the event would not be forgotten; the
Berserker was half smiling, but when one of the others staggered upright and growled, ‘Let’s cut his slut-poker and stuff it …’ he was silenced abruptly.

Harald tossed the head on to the flame and watched as the fire ate the hair and the skin and crisped the flesh until it was indistinguishable from the charred wood.

‘The same for you all,’ said Harald. ‘The same for all killers of innocent farmers. The same for all beasts of Odin.’

And he turned and walked towards the great hall.

An hour later, in the long hall, the gloomy atmosphere lifted for a while as the celebration of Harald’s return grew wild and noisy. The great fire spluttered and crackled as the carcass of the goat turned on its spit and browned and crisped, filling the muggy air of the hall with its own delicious stench; wood smoke stung the eyes and choked the lungs of the gathered menfolk who sprawled and lounged along the great table, listening to jests and tales that they had heard a hundred times before. Harald laughed as well, seated by his father who grimaced as he swilled the stolen mead that Harald had brought home, and spat the honey-sweet liquid into the fire where it flared for a moment.

Laughter.

‘Celtish piss!’ roared the old man, and reached for the pottery jug of sour ale. A far better drink, and far faster in its effect.

Harald too filled his horn mug with the local brew and drank it in great quantities, drowning out of his mind the haunting memory of the slaughter, the terrible responsibility he felt about breaking the news of her father’s death to Elena – and drowning most of all the fact of the killers seated outside the hall, brooding through the dark and cloudy night, tensing, rising towards some vile and mortal action.

Father and son lost themselves rapidly in the effects of the drink. Minds whirled, faces creased with laughter, hands slapped tables and spittle flew through the air to register disgust or amusement at some overblown or too often heard brag or tale from the gathered townsmen.

The remains of the summer berries, raspberries and mould-covered strawberries, were placed before them, with cakes of rye and acorn bread that soon vanished into hungry mouths.

The goat crisped. Harald felt his mind lose coherence, as his stomach fought the ale whilst it waited for food.

Most of the berries found themselves projected through the stinking air of the hall; berry war and laughter raged across the table; noisy, drunken youngsters stood and toppled as they voiced a story of some nearby wench whose legs had gripped them in the eternal vice behind some stable or other, or down by the water’s edge where seals played splash games, watching the human antics, safe for the moment as lust took time away from hunting.

Fathers growled and roared as they recognised their own daughters, but reason prevailed as the frightened youngsters protested that
this
girl was
ugly, and the daughter of the prominent
hauldr
who so honoured the hold with his presence, was a girl for their dreams only and had never been touched by hand or ‘axe’.

At last the goat was served. Harald drew his honoured knife across the flanks and a great cheer arose from the hall. Hacking off his liberal portion Harald wolfed the meat and waited, hoping for the effects of the drink to drain away, but of course they didn’t.

He watched the spinning, reeling room, the rising smoke and awful flatulent stench assailing his nostrils and lending an unpleasant flavour to everything that passed his lips. The fire’s crackling was loud in his ears, the flickering of its yellow flame sending the writhing shadows of the gathered farmers dancing and gesticulating across the turf walls and the dry straw roof.

His father, perhaps himself now well barricaded against his grief behind the wall of drink, slapped his shoulders and urged his son to his feet.

And Harald, swaying unsteadily, grinned sheepishly as he looked at the suddenly interested host and began to tell of his adventures.

‘Bravely I fought …!’ he began loudly, but fell backwards on to the bench to a great cry of laughter and further urging to stand.

He swayed upright, raised his short sword into the air. ‘
Singing life taker
I christened my blade, and singing she took the life of … of … three Celtish sword-whores, who fought as fierce as Wolves, as rabid as a mad dog, but they fell before me, cut to ribbons … begging …’

He fell backwards again and the shrieks of laughter drowned a clap of distant thunder outside and above the hall.

‘Did you take MacNeill?’ called a voice, an old warrior whose early life had taken him to the same Celtic shores, fighting those same red-haired devils … green-eyed, red-haired he-wolves.

‘We struck his men down in droves,’ shouted Harald. ‘Gudrack is a mighty leader, with mighty strategy.’

‘Strategy?’ laughed the host of men. ‘What strategy?’

Harald swayed forward, started through glazed eyes at the heaving table, the distorted faces and bodies of the men. ‘A mighty strategy,’ he repeated, conscious of his slurring words. ‘We all formed …’ he drank from his horn, and waved the half-full mug at the farmers, slopping ale across his hand and his platter. ‘We all formed into a single huge block of men … mighty we looked, fiercesome we shrieked, our swords clattered against our shields and even the ghosts of the dead ran amok with fright as we sped down the valley – a mighty strategy. We smashed them to pulp! We cut them to ribbons! We trampled them into the green grass! Red ran everywhere; limbs lay twitching and heads, severed from their body, rolled away in fright as we approached, screaming for mercy, but we put out their eyes and boiled their brains. Mighty were the Norsemen.’

Again he slumped down heavily and the cheers and laughter brought him angrily back to his feet.

His father’s eyes streamed tears, of mirth, no doubt, and yet …

‘They laugh at me,’ murmured Harald, and Bluetooth sobered and shook his head.

‘They envy you, Harald. They see themselves in you, but themselves as they were and can no longer be. Brash, youthful, full of life. They love you, Harald. They want to be you. Tell us more.’

‘There was this woman …’ said Harald loudly, thinking of the wench he had spared, but quickly trying to imagine how it would have been. The hall echoed to the howls of interest and, as the noise died, so Harald doubted his ability to lie.

‘No there wasn’t,’ he confessed, and laughter almost brought the roof down. ‘But there
almost
was,’ he shouted, and then fell sombre again.

‘But you couldn’t find a hook to hang your breeks,’ laughed a voice, and the company of feasting men fell hysterical to the table.

‘Tell us of your scars!’ shouted a younger man.

Harald drew himself upright and cradled his sword in his hand, oblivious of the terrible manners he was thus evidencing. ‘Fiercely I fought,’ he cried. ‘My war cry was terrible to hear. It struck fear into the hearts of the Celtish sluts. It struck fear into the hearts of the Celtish sluts. It struck fear into the hearts of my own brothers. Even Odin fell silent before my war cry …’

‘Aaagh,’ cried the host of men, impressed by the acceptable blasphemy.

Emboldened by this interest Harald went on: ‘I fought alone against ten red-haired giants of the tribe of MacCormac. Hissed their blades, but my blade hissed louder; flowed my blood, but their blood spilled with their tripes as I slit them groin to throat with slash after slash. Left for dead I lay on the green earth and cried my war cry even then, and the sound of it kept the loathsome sluts at bay.’

The table was thumped by fist and elbow as the youth’s bravado set the images of their pasts dancing in the farmers’ minds.

‘I closed my eyes and drew strength from my sword, from the souls of those it had eaten. I opened my eyes to see a black-robed valkyrie hovering above me, drooling on my face as she revealed and shook her full, white breasts and beckoned me upwards.

‘No! I cried, and she revealed her plump, soft thighs.

‘No! I cried, and she sang a song, entrancing me, inviting me. But I shook my head and poked her with my singing life-taker, my blooded sword!’

At this great cheers and the thunder of the oak table being solidly pounded by bronzed and brawny fists.

Harald grinned and swayed, reached for the jug of ale, glancing at his father as he did so. The old man winked and laughed, and Harald felt a great
surge of pleasure; amid the din there was the sound of thunder, a scream, perhaps of laughter, perhaps of something else …

And then:

With a crash the door of the hall flew open. Bitter wind blew suddenly across the table, sending the warmth and smoke swirling before it. The night, the winter darkness, sent fingers of ice running around the gathered hold.

For a moment Harald thought the sound, the noise of thunder, was just the antics of the guests; but when the fire dimmed, and the atmosphere of contentment and pleasure drained away to leave a haunting silence, grey shapes and staring, frightened eyes, he knew that the festivities were ended.

Lurching upright, feeling the ale’s heady drug make a fool of his body and vision, he stared at the door, across the turned heads of his fellow village folk.

Walking slowly into the hall, swaying as great bears sway when they walk towards some panicking deer, the Berserks came.

Led by the huge, red-haired man who had seemed to Harald to be the leader of the group of killers, they stopped inside the hall and stared at Erik Bluetooth. Grotesque to look at, their smell was worse – the stench of blood and excrement soaking their furs and seal-skin leggings. Around the bull neck of the leader hung a necklace of flashing, fire-trimmed bear-teeth. All six wore, on their metal helms, the skull of a bear, canines reaching down across the forehead to point to the narrow, deep-set eyes of the warriors of Odin who carried these trophies.

Swords slithered from sheaths, waved threateningly in the fire glow, flashing and glittering as the six Berserks moved in towards the table. The giant who led them was grinning and his gaze seemed fixed on Harald.

‘A burning for us all, is it?’ he muttered loudly, menacingly. ‘Then come and try us, young farmer whore-slit. Come and hack the heads off our shoulders and see how long your tripes remain unspilled.’

There was sudden panic in the hall; the benches were overturned as men, old and young alike, fled from the Berserks’ approach, ran for cover, or in rare instances darted for weapons stacked against the wall.

Harald wielded his sword, manifestly unafraid, secretly petrified. The great Bear Tooth himself came towards him, preceded by his fecal stench, the eyes that watched the young Viking filled with hatred and shot through with red and black.

Smoke choked Harald as the fire billowed and guttered, torn before the icy gale blowing from the yard.

A man screamed, his body arching as a Berserker’s sword split his head through to the jaw, spilling brains and blood in a pink and grey mess.

At once there was frenzy.

The smell of blood, the sight of it, sent the Berserks into that frightening
rage of animal frenzy, of sword-wielding, invulnerable offensiveness, that was so useful in battle and so terrifying in any other place.

Harald had seen it before, the wheeling, whirling, screaming action, as singing blades took off scalps, heads, arms and feet, the Berserks crouching and jumping as they spat and screamed, thrusting, lunging and slashing everything including themselves.

Men fell like pigs at a midwinter fertility feast, stuck through and split open, guts and brains washing the earthen floor and draining through into the valleys of the mid world. Harald fled from the hall, driving one Berserker before him, dodging the frenzied shape as its screams deafened him and its blade sang close to his ears, narrowly missing cutting him down for once and for good.

In this state, he knew, there was no personal motivation, no desire for revenge; there was only the need for killing … Odin had possessed them, drawn from Asgard by the sudden stench of human blood, drawn from his idle games by the thought of slaughter, directing his beast-men in their whirling dance of destruction.

Was he laughing?

Thunder rolled across the northern sky; Thor groaning, perhaps, at the indulgence of the other war god. Lightning prefaced a storm, out across the black mountains of the eastern lands; Odin strode the heavens, his tears of laughter drenching the autumn soil, driving the panicking beasts before them.

At the door of the hall, the noise of the screaming and the stench of slaughter still strong in his senses, Harald paused.

There were less dead than he had imagined, most of the farmers having fled and escaped the blind fury of the Berserks.

But as he watched, so the six foul creatures turned to regard him, ceasing their frenzy, stifling their death cries, shaking and tensing as their blood-stained bodies froze, a momentary image of horror …

Each had the face of a bear, dripping jowls, pointed snout, opening and growling, red tongues licking forwards, tasting the air for the flesh drops that filled the hall; gleaming eyes, coal black; brown fur, smeared and clogged with the blood of their victims; all the features of the great brown bear that prowled and haunted these northlands and was best left well alone.

At once the bears were laughing, swaying as they stood and watched Harald, leaning back and laughing through the sticky muzzles, roaring with humour at something that Harald failed to understand.

He stood in the night and slowly became aware that he was alone in the yard. Turning quickly he saw the halls and huts tightly closed, their occupants already barricaded inside. Not for anything would they open up now.

But something else caught his attention. A sound – like the scything of wind on a summer’s day, the way it sounds as it blows across an empty field. And cries, as of pain, or dying … outside the wall.