M. Lachlan: Fenrir

He drew his sword to show a thumb’s width of steel.

‘What has happened?’

‘You should know, troll-witch. Our Helgi is dead. Our protector is dead.’

‘How?’

‘He put her in the earth and she struck at him. The Frankish witch cast a glamour on a man who Helgi had well rewarded. Our prince is dead. Dead, and we must look to our defences.’

Hugin turned away from the gate and ran back along the stream of people. The woman screamed after him that an enemy was among them, but the confusion was too great, the fog too thick. He was just a shape in the mist.

He was running up a hill now. Men’s voices shouting, ‘Witch, witch, kill the witch!’ Hugin knew there was no time for reason, debate or argument. These men had found Aelis and were going to kill her.

Black shadows in front of him. Another four paces and they were men — druzhina with spears, not looking at him but peering down at their feet. He charged, beheading one with a left-to-right diagonal swipe and kicking the man next to him in the small of the back, hoping to put him out of the fight for long enough to deal with his two comrades. Hugin took off the hand of a druzhina who was trying to draw his sword and booted him into the man behind him, sending both warriors sprawling. He then killed the uninjured man with a blow to the head. The sword jammed in the skull. Hugin let it go. The handless man was in shock, staring at his bloody stump. Hugin drew his knife and gutted him then turned to face the druzhina he had kicked at the start of the attack. The man wasn’t there.

Only then did Hugin realise there was a pit in front of him and the man had fallen in. The townswoman’s words came back to him: He put her in the earth.

A face appeared over the lip of the hole and Hugin kicked it as hard as he could. The man fell back and Hugin heard shouting below. He looked down. A druzhina with a torch was looking up — eight or nine more of them in the tiny pit, fearful faces gazing at him. He tried to pull up the ladder but the men grabbed it, though none of them looked as though they wanted to climb it to their deaths.

Working quickly, Hugin shoved the nearest body to the edge of the pit and booted it in. More shouting from below. He could tell the pit was deep but not so deep he couldn’t jump down. He rolled another body to the edge and hurled the corpse down. Then he freed his sword from the warrior’s skull and rolled that man in to the pit too. He was about to leap down himself when he saw something from the corner of his eye. The body of the merchant. He could only really tell it was him from his silk turban because his corpse had been reduced to mere meat by the ferocity of the attack that had killed him.

‘Come on,’ said the Raven. ‘You can join me in a last battle, merchant.’

He rolled the body to the edge of the pit with his foot and then booted it in, jumping in after it without a sound, his long knife drawn. He wanted the druzhina to think that he was just another body, harmless beyond its initial impact. For the first breath when he landed he would be just a corpse. Then he would start to make them.

Men broke his fall — dead and living, the torch hitting the floor and going out as he smashed into the warriors. Hugin went wild, slashing and stabbing as he had never done before. No one could see, but Hugin had eight targets, his opponents only one. Swords were too big, axes useless, but the druzhina used them anyway. Friend killed friend in the tiny space, Rus axe struck Rus flesh, Rus sword tore Rus guts. At last it was quiet and the Raven stood on his corpse mound, not knowing whether to hold his shoulder or his face. Both were cut and his tongue came out of the wound in his cheek all the way to his back teeth. Never mind, his sword arm was in good order.

Light came from a tunnel at his feet.

He hauled the bodies out of the way and crawled into the tiny space. It was about ten body lengths long and tight as a coffin. He wriggled forward, hoping there was no druzhina coming the other way. If there was one with a spear then Hugin was dead. There was no druzhina; only a torch burning weakly on the floor of the tunnel. Hugin shouldered his way forward. The torch was near the lip of a shaft that disappeared into darkness. He could see nothing down there.

Then he heard a voice: ‘Witch! Where are you, witch?’

There was a woman’s scream and a man’s roar.

Hugin pulled himself forward. The ceiling was a little higher over the pit and he managed to sit upright. He sheathed his knife, checked the tie on his sword and jumped into the darkness, into the cold black water.

Black, freezing water, so cold and dark it numbed all sense of where the surface was. Aelis kicked up, breathed in and choked, kicked again in panic and finally took air into her lungs. Her limbs were dead, her heart pounding. She could see nothing and the water was deep. And then a tiny light, wavering in the darkness. She kicked towards it, taking in mouthfuls of icy water, flailing her arms.

Her hand hit something solid. A shelf of some sort. She blinked the water out of her eyes and looked around her. She seemed to be in a large cavern, the water ending at a ledge that had clearly been cut rather than formed by nature.

A man dropped into the pool behind her and panic took over. She couldn’t lift herself out of the water. She had hit her head when she fell. Pain spread across her forehead and she feared she would pass out. She glanced over her shoulder. The man behind her was much taller than she was and had found the bottom with his feet. He was walking towards her, his head out of the water. She was trembling, her hands unable to grasp her knife.

A searing pain shot into her guts. She reached down to feel something hard and sharp protruding from her belly. The man had a spear and he had thrust it straight through her, she realised. She retched and and cried out, one hand reaching for the bank, the other grasping the spearhead.

And then from above her she felt hands reaching down about her neck.

‘It is time,’ said a childish voice. ‘The stone has protected your deliverers. Its task is over.’ The pendant was untied and the runes lit up all around her again.

The warrior leaped at her, pushing her head underwater. The spear twisted as their bodies came together and the runes shrieked and sang as they spun in three orbits of eight around Aelis and around the figure on the side of the pool.

Aelis tried to go to the garden of her mind, to that place at Loches where the candles burned, but the runes were dancing, and she could not make them send her there. She gulped in freezing mouthfuls. Then it was quiet. She heard a girl’s voice in her head: I have waited so long in the dark for you. The runes showed me you would come here if I led the wolf to you.’

Who are you?

My name is your name.

Who are you?

Odin.

I am not a god, said Aelis.

The runes are inside you. Sixteen strong. When they become twenty-four you and I will be the god.

How shall they become twenty-four?

In Odin’s old way. Death, said the voice.

Do not give in to him.

He is you. This is our destiny. Three will become one, the knot will be retied and the dead lord will live to die in Middle Earth, to make his sacrifice to fate. We are three, made whole and new again in death, tied in the knot of death.

The god is in us but he is not us. Let him wait for death, let him not live to die. If I live then you can live too.

But you will not live.

I will live.

You will not live, said the voice.

The runes in Aelis were singing, answering voices in perfect counterpoint to the other ones in the chamber.

I am not what I was.