Wolfsangel (20 page)
Authors: M. D. Lachlan
The quickest way to kill someone in their sleep depends on how they are lying. If he is on his front then it’s relatively easy to break his neck with an arm around the head and a knee in the back. Feileg had done this two or three times and found that even if the neck didn’t break he still had an effective stranglehold on his prey and could finish him very quickly. If the man was on his side or back then he might stamp him to death. Other times, when silence was necessary, he had power enough in his fingers to crush his throat.
Feileg - perhaps it is better to call him the wolfman because the hormonal surge he felt within him at the prospect of killing made his humanity seem a weak and withered thing - didn’t make a sound as he reached the brush that concealed the sleeping man. The man was on his back and the wolfman decided to creep up on his victim and twist his neck.
There was a growl, low and guttural. The wolfman glanced around to see where it had come from. He hadn’t made the noise himself. It was like nothing natural, and he felt a chill creep down his spine. Every pore seemed open and sweating, his body signalling danger with every sense. The growl came again, even lower, like rock on rock.
Feileg flattened himself to the ground. A third growl, this time like something coming from the lower earth, and a word: ‘Adisla.’ Feileg looked up. The noise was coming from the sleeping man. He was snoring. Feileg’s mind went back to the hut of the berserks where he had been raised. His memories of that time were now just impressions: the dark of the hut, the smell of his mother’s skirts, a glimpse of himself being chased in a game by the girls he considered his sisters. Only one incident stuck out. The man he had called father had snored like thunder, especially when drunk. The children had put feathers on his lips and hooted as he puffed them away. He remembered one of the girls putting one next to her father’s behind to see if that moved when he farted. It
had
moved and Feileg had thought he would never stop laughing. Looking down at the sleeping Vali, he heard another strange noise, like the babble of a stream. It was, he realised, coming from himself. He was chuckling. He hadn’t done that in a long time.
had
moved and Feileg had thought he would never stop laughing. Looking down at the sleeping Vali, he heard another strange noise, like the babble of a stream. It was, he realised, coming from himself. He was chuckling. He hadn’t done that in a long time.
As he laughed, a glimpse of the meaning of human interaction returned to him, or rather a fleeting delight in inanities, and he felt a sort of fellowship with the snoring man, almost the desire to wake him and tell him how loud, how funny, he sounded. But Feileg had to kill him. The focus - those who didn’t know wolfmen called it rage - that made this easier though had been carried away by his laughter. He looked hard at Vali. Feileg hadn’t seen his own face since he was six and then only rarely. His image of himself had been mainly formed by looking into the shiny surfaces of the sword blades he had taken so he wasn’t immediately struck by his resemblance to the man before him, but something within him made it difficult to murder him outright.
Feileg sat for a while at the man’s feet. He studied him closely. He had - by ritual, the consumption of strange mushrooms, privation and lack of practice - lost the habit of thinking in words. So it was a shapeless, sliding thought that came to him as he looked at Vali’s combed and clipped hair, the fine sword that lay at his side, the rich colour of his woollen coat. He could not have articulated what he felt but this made the sense no less powerful. There was himself, as he could have been, had the fates weaved him a different skein. The man had said a word: Adisla. Feileg instinctively recognised it for what it was - a girl’s name. He did not feel unhappy, or at least he could not identify his emotion as unhappiness, but he did begin to feel uncomfortable about the path that the fates had chosen for him.
He breathed in, smelling something sweet and something rancid. He saw Vali’s pack and felt his saliva rise. He opened it and, without pausing to examine what he found, began to eat. He ate the honey and the stale bread and the cheese. He ate the berserker mushrooms and the long root. He couldn’t abide even the smell of the wolfsbane but the sleeping mixture was sweet and palatable so he sucked it down and pushed his tongue into the pot to get the last drops. Then he ate the mint and drained Vali’s wineskin. He began to feel peaceful, warm and relaxed.
From up the valley the wolves began to howl, but he could not hear them to reply. Disa’s white night potion had made the world soft. Feileg lay down on the grass and slept.
15 A Captive
Vali really did think he was dreaming. He came to himself with that strange sensation that you sometimes get when waking in unfamiliar surroundings, when reality makes a sudden lurch and you don’t know where you are or how you got there.
At his feet, sleeping face down, was a powerfully built man dressed in little but a wolf pelt. The ruins of the pack were next to him, all food gone, and his wineskin lay flat as a blanket at his side. At first he thought it was dark but then he realised it was the shadow of the horses. They had pressed in as close as they could to him. No wonder. From down the valley he heard the call of a wolf.
Vali grabbed for his sword and drew it, pointing it at the sleeping figure. This had to be a wolfman. Vali didn’t know what to do. He knew it would be far more impressive to take the bandit alive and - more than that - it would be proof he had a wolfman and not some dressed-up slave. But the man - no older than he was - was impressively muscled. Even the thralls who did most of the heavy labour on the farms were not made so powerfully. If he awoke while Vali was tying him up then the prince didn’t fancy his chances in a wrestling competition.
Vali looked around him. The pack was completely empty, everything in it gone. There were the little cloth bags in which he’d carried Disa’s herbs all torn; there was the empty honey pot and the one containing the sleeping draught.
He smiled to himself when he realised what had happened. Carefully, he pushed the tip of his sword into the wolfman’s back, drawing a little blood. That was a relief, knowing that ordinary weapons could hurt him. The wolfman didn’t even stir.
Vali took the cord from the saddle at his side. He had never actually needed to tie anyone up before and didn’t quite know how to do it, so he erred on the side of caution, binding the man’s hands behind his back, then his legs, then his hands again and his legs again.
He had never thought of himself as religious or superstitious but he was almost afraid to touch the wolfman and certainly didn’t want to move the wolf pelt he wore over his head. It was a magical item, capable of transforming the man into a snarling half wolf. Even the merchant Veles Libor had taken those stories seriously.
Vali thought of the remedies for magic that he knew - not many, he’d had no reason or opportunity to learn them. However, he knew that magicians were supposed to be able to enchant you with their gaze and a way to negate this power was to blindfold them. He had nothing that would do for a blindfold; he did, however, have the bag that he had taken the rope from. But as he lifted the wolfman to slide the bag over his head, he caught a glimpse of something extraordinary.
The man was strikingly similar to Vali himself. His face was far more weatherbeaten and lean, and his hair was wild, but his beard was sparse and thin, like Vali’s, his features virtually identical. Vali shivered. This was truly a shape-shifter.
He pulled the bag over the man’s head, taking care not to touch the magical wolf pelt, breathed out heavily and told himself to be calm. Was this a shape-shifter? It was possible, he thought, that the man simply resembled him. He had seen very few dark-haired men. Perhaps they all looked the same. Bragi said the people of the far west islands had dark hair, and you couldn’t tell one from another. He also said that they stank - and this man certainly did.
Vali thought on. He had heard rumours and stories brought back by traders of something called a fetch, an evil spirit that copied someone’s appearance. He couldn’t remember what it was meant to do but he was sure it wasn’t very pleasant. He tried to regain his calm. He told himself he had been tired. No wonder he was seeing things. The sooner he was back at Forkbeard’s hall, the better, he thought. He tacked up the horses.
Vali didn’t quite know the best way to transport the wolfman, so he improvised. He pulled the man up to a standing position and then shouldered him across the saddle of the horse. He tied the wolfman’s hands to his feet around the animal and then looped a rope around his waist. He wound that around the pommel of the saddle at the front and the cantle at the rear. All the time the wolfman lolled and flopped as if he was dead. Vali pushed and tugged at him to make sure he was secure.
When he was satisfied with his work, the prince tied the reins of his captive’s horse to his own saddle, mounted and kicked towards home. From somewhere up towards the black bulk of the mountain he heard the wolves call. He headed down the valley with the horses at a trot. The sooner he was out of this country, he thought, the better.
16 An Engagement
News of his arrival had spread from the outer farms and the people of Eikund were there in numbers to greet him as he arrived at Forkbeard’s hall.
He had gone there by the most direct route, bypassing Disa’s house. He’d asked the first person he’d met about her and had been told she was very poorly. Visiting her, he thought, would be too much for her at that moment and he decided to wait until the clamour that greeted his arrival had died down, though he sent her word of his success. Every child in the area was running ahead of him, shouting and whooping and calling him a hero. Some of them touched the wolfman as he passed, or threw mud and cursed him. Women too rained insults on the man, and hit him with sticks for good measure. Vali had to tell them to stop it, as they were frightening his horses. The men stood with their arms folded, shaking their heads and laughing to themselves. They had misjudged Vali, it seemed, and they were glad to have been mistaken. Finally, he had acted in a way they understood. One or two of the farmers came forward with knives, shouting that they would kill the wolfman there and then. Vali drew his sword and they backed off. They were glory thieves, he thought, and if they wanted to kill a wolfman they could go and get one of their own.
It had taken two weeks for Vali to make his way home. The return had been in some ways harder than his outward journey. Leaving Eikund, he had been in a trance and had had to make no decisions regarding his direction of travel. On his way back he had no such help and had to decide his way for himself. However, he did recognise the country he had travelled through, and in the lush northern summer his tracks were clear - hoofprints from his horses, the nibbled bushes and manure that showed he had made camp. He even managed to shorten his journey by getting fishermen to row him across a few of the fjords. They refused payment when they saw his captive, glad he had rid them of a dangerous bandit.
There were practical difficulties. The wolfman had woken up after a day and Vali had been forced to chase after his horse, which had been spooked by his kicking. Vali had talked to the man and he had become calmer, accepting his fate like an animal. The wolves had proved a disquieting presence. During the day he didn’t see them, although he felt always that he was being watched, but in the long dusk he heard them in the hills. He had expected the wolfman to reply. Vali knew these sorcerers were said to command wolves. He decided that if the wolfman called for help he would have to kill him. His prisoner remained silent though.
There was the problem of untacking the horses at night, and of replacing the wolfman in the saddle every morning but, these difficulties aside, the journey had gone smoothly. They passed farmsteads and Vali asked for supplies. The farmers would have been generous to any traveller but, like the fishermen, when they saw the prince had a captured bandit, they were elated. They gave freely and Vali ate well.
At first Vali was almost pleased to see that the wolfman had developed sores from the chafing of the saddle on his side. He allowed him to drink, sparingly, once a day - though he never fully removed the bag - but he gave him no food. This meant that if he should work free of his bonds he would be less able to fight or run. Part of him was almost inclined to let him die. But Vali had finally begun to appreciate the merits of portraying himself as a hero. It might be a lie, but it gained him the respect of his fellows and made life easier. A week from home Vali had begun to feed the wolfman, to give him more water and to sit him upright on the horse. He wanted him to look fierce when he arrived back, the better to reflect on himself.
Vali’s success, it was agreed, was spectacular. It had been thought the mission would take him a minimum of two months and that Adisla would hang. He had returned in less than one and she was free.
Adisla was not at the hall. With Forkbeard gone to the assembly at Nidarnes along with all the nobles and the rest of the court, enthusiasm for keeping her confined had waned. She had never been more than half a day’s walk from her farm in her life so was unlikely to run off, reasoned her guards. Her habit of singing in a discordant voice during the evenings hadn’t endeared her to them either, and they’d let her go back to her mother.
However, as Vali tied up his horses, he was led aside by Hogni and Orri, both in a fever of agitation.
‘Prince Vali, Prince Vali,’ said Hogni, ‘I must talk to you.’
‘You have nothing to say to me,’ he said. ‘Your animals are safe and you may take them back now.’
Hogni kept his voice as low as he could. ‘You are in great danger.’
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