M. Lachlan: Wolfsangel

Authun raised the Moonsword. It was as if the animal caught his intent the instant it arose in the king. It snarled forward in a blur, knocking him to the floor. The byrnie saved his back on the rough stone but the wind was knocked from him.

Authun could not let that concern him.

Feileg bit down his agony and watched in the flickering candlelight as the king rolled away from the beast’s jaws, wriggling underneath it to slash up with his sword. The wolf was cut, its blood splashing onto Authun’s face.

The creature howled and leaped away from Authun but did not take long to recover. It charged again, but this time swiped at the king’s sword arm with its man-like arm. Authun had been ready to duck the charge but the attack on his weapon surprised him. He’d expect that from a man but not an animal. There was a clatter as the Moonsword went flashing across the cave. For the first time in his life Authun had been disarmed in battle.

Now the fight really started, the wolf driving into the king with tooth and claw, the king turning and ducking, dodging and jumping and — when that failed — catching the attacks on his shield.

Even through his pain Feileg had to admire the old warrior. Though empty-handed and fighting such an enemy, he didn’t lose his head. All the time, as he slipped past the creature’s attacks or rolled and twisted away, he was working his way towards where his sword lay. Feileg had to wonder why the warrior’s companion didn’t help him. The woman just sat in the candle glow, calm as if she was listening to a story by the fire.

The king was getting close to his sword. He was unharmed, though the animal had torn holes in his byrnie and ripped his shield to splinters. Feileg summoned his strength and crawled forward. The battle was almost on top of him, the old warrior crouching to feel for his sword. Feileg put his hand on the Moonsword, picked it up and dragged himself away into the shadows.

Authun did not pause; he simply readjusted his retreat, giving ground with each one of the wolf’s attacks, back towards the hoard of gold and the weapons that lay within it.

Feileg pulled himself to his feet and limped towards the nearest tunnel. Pushing himself along the wall of the passage he made his way into the darkness, the sounds of the fight fading in his ears. He felt his way down and down. The tunnel seemed endless but he couldn’t afford to rest. He drove himself on, away from the old warrior, away from the teeth of the wolf, and after some time had the sense that he was in a larger cave.

Then he heard something, a whimper. It was some distance away, and for a moment he dared to think it was Adisla. He ran his hand across the wall of the cave and limped on, clutching his wounded thigh with one hand, the Moonsword pressed under his other arm. The wall opened into another corridor. It was small, mercifully small, not much wider than a man. The beast would not be able to get down there. From below he heard the voice again.

‘Help me.’ His stomach leaped. It was Adisla.

He pushed himself on, the going terribly hard on the uneven floor.

‘Help me!’ The voice was louder now. Yes, no mistake, it was her.

Around a curve in the tunnel he could see a light.

The creature was hungry. The need to eat saturated his mind as the first light appeared like the nimbus of the sun from behind a rain cloud at the edge of the great slab that sealed him in. But he had not lost his animal caution and watched from the darkness to see what it was that had freed him. Wolves do not rush in until they know the odds, and the creature, who only had a weak notion of his invulnerability, wanted to see his opponents before striking.

But then they had come down into the pit and other beast feelings had taken over. If an animal stays somewhere long enough, it regards that place as its den. The creature felt threatened.

He heard words he didn’t really understand: ‘Let me go first. This treasure may be delicate and I should assess how best to move it.’

‘We are taking everything from this tomb, merchant. Do not make me leave your body in payment.’

There was no idea of revenge in the wolf’s brain as he snapped off Bodvar Bjarki’s head, only hunger.

There was only hunger too as he watched Veles trying in vain to climb the rope out of the pit. He closed on him, ripped open his back with a single bite, gulped down a gob of meat, pawed him to the floor and tore away the flesh from his belly, sucking on his sweet entrails as the merchant screamed.

Vali might have been pleased to see Veles suffer for what he had done to him, or might have thought that it was too strong a punishment for the crime he had committed, but he was scarcely there inside the wolf to have feelings either way. He was not one thing any more; he was a crowd, a mob, each of its members screaming for attention. The sorcerer, the Whale People, the family of reindeer hunters, the pirate Danes were all in him, or rather he was them, his consciousness a wild jumble of digested thoughts and personalities. His mind was like a marketplace, each bidder yabbering to stake his claim. Above them all though was the keening voice of the wolf, providing direction, impelling his body to action.

Panic flooded down from above. Men were scrambling to replace the great slab of rock that had sealed him in, but no one could shift it. They gave up and ran.

The wolf was out of the pit in a bound. There were things in his way, things that yelled and beat at him, so he swept them aside, cracked them in his jaws, allowed their juices and ichors to calm the hunger of his long incarceration.

When they were all dead, he lay down, heavy with what he had eaten, his brain torpid, his body growing as it put its meal to work under the frozen moon and the green fire skies of the winter’s unyielding dark.

He was not Vali. His body was like a twisted musical instrument and the prince was a tune it could play, but it did not then, nor for a while, not until he heard her cry the agonised howl that called him to life inside the beast.

In the lowest cave of the Troll Wall it appeared to Adisla that she lay on a wonderful bed of straw covered with luxurious furs. She was back in her house. Her mother was there and Barth the Dane, Manni and all her brothers. The calm that had come down upon her with the lady’s presence seemed like the snugness of her bed on a winter’s morning.

Adisla knew the witch queen wanted her to call Vali. Adisla spoke his name. The witch looked into her eyes and stroked her hair. She wanted Adisla to repeat the name, she could tell, and she did so gladly after all the lady’s kindnesses.

The witch queen looked down at Adisla and nodded to herself. She had been trying to work through the girl, to channel Adisla’s tender thoughts in order to send them to the wolf and summon him. That, it appeared, was not going to work.

Gullveig allowed the barbed rune to surface in her mind. It made her shiver. Its presence felt almost toxic, as if she held it too long it would burn her, destroy her even. Then she sent it to the mind of the girl before her.

Adisla screamed as her illusion fell away. She was not in her bed at all; there was no house, no loving family around her. She was pinioned on a narrow wedge of sharp stones at the end of a tapering cave. The stones cut her and the weird light of oil lamps cast shadows that seemed like long cruel fingers, reaching out to tear her flesh. She was in agony.

As the rune spilled from the witch’s mind, Adisla saw what was intended. She saw visions of death — hers and Vali’s, Feileg’s and Bragi’s, in that life and in others, stretching away into time. And she saw what the witch herself didn’t see. She saw Gullveig’s true name, and that knowledge was more terrible than the bonds that tied her down, more terrible than the sharp rocks that cut her, more terrible even than Vali, transformed and murderous. Adisla knew that the lady wanted her to call Vali, and now she knew why.