James Wilde: Hereward

‘What has made you like this?’

The mercenary moaned as he came to his senses. When Hereward leaned over him with the knife, the scream tore from his throat before the cold metal had even been pressed to his skin.

Alric shouted over the din, ‘You rise from the blood of innocents. You kill, without guilt, as if you have no soul. I ask you again — what made you like this?’

‘God made me like this.’

The blood-chilling scream ripped through the night-shrouded forest, growing shriller and more intense with each passing moment until it no longer sounded human. For that, Harald Redteeth’s men gave thanks, for they could pretend it was some wild animal or fearsome monster hunting among the trees. But when it rolled on as though it would never end, they bowed their heads and clutched at their ears, unable to extinguish their visions of the suffering their comrade endured.

Harald Redteeth listened impassively to the agonized sound. He was a mercenary who took the coin of any man, be he merchant, thegn or king, who wanted death dealt quickly and harshly, and his appearance underscored his fearsome reputation. From the eyeholes of his axe-dented helmet, his black, distended pupils reflected the dancing flames of Gedley. His wild hair and beard were stained red by the dyes his people made from the hedgerow berries, his coarse woollen cloak hanging over furs greased with lamb fat that kept out the cold. And underneath those he wore his battle-scarred mail, rusted and bloodstained, and a sweat-reeking tunic. The skulls of birds and woodland animals swung from the hauberk on leather strips. At his side hung his axe, Grim.

‘There is still time to save him,’ Ivar, his second in command, muttered.

‘He died long ago,’ Redteeth replied. ‘What you hear are the echoes as his spirit leaves his body.’

Ivar wrapped his woollen cloak around him against the blizzard as he sifted through every brutal campaign and bloody raid he had experienced for something that sickened him more. ‘Why doesn’t the bastard just slit his throat and be done with it?’

‘He is trying to draw us out, into the forest, at night, where he has the advantage.’

‘And the monk?’

‘The tracks show he went with the stranger. If that is true, he could be dead by now, or he will be soon. We will search for his body at first light.’

The scream continued to plumb the depths of agony. Listening intently, Harald Redteeth noted a melody that no others heard, the song of life that throbbed behind the surface of everything, with a heartbeat for a drum to keep the steady pace until the song came to its end. He began to whistle along. Ivar gave a troubled sideways glance, and took an unconscious step away.

The monk was business, easily dealt with for the handful of coin, but the stranger was intriguing, Harald ruminated. Who was this warrior who fought with such brutality and passion? And why had he decided to involve himself in a matter that did not concern him?

We are the law here, Redteeth said to himself. We decide who survives and who dies. The stranger will not leave Northumbria alive.

Absently, he held out an open hand. Ivar delved into his pouch and handed over a small number of the dried toadstools. Carefully, Redteeth examined the scarlet caps dotted with white, and the large creamy gills.

‘It is the Blod-Monath,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘We have made our sacrifices as our forefathers did, but the Blood-Month demands more. This winter is earlier and harder than most, and now this stranger… I would know what it all means.’ He paused. ‘There is talk among the seers of an ending. Omens… portents…’

‘Is this the Fimbulwinter before the great battle that heralds Ragnarok and the end of everything?’ Ivar asked, unsettled.

‘Perhaps. Even the Christians see the omens too.’

‘They say a raven spoke to Earl Tostig, and he blanched and hid himself away in his hall, and refused to tell anyone what the bird said,’ Ivar remembered with a shudder.

Redteeth popped one large and one small toadstool into his mouth. ‘We will make camp here where there will be warmth to see us through the night. Leave me now, for I journey far beyond Midgard to the shores of the great black sea. If I die before I return, you will take the lead.’

Nodding, Ivar walked away, bellowing to the others to set up camp. They all knew the dangers of the ritual Redteeth had embarked on. Sometimes the spirits did not allow the traveller to return with the knowledge he had gained along the shores of that vast sea, or in the dense, endless forest of the night. But Redteeth had wrestled with the powers before on more than one occasion, and he had always returned unscathed, with the words of the vaettir still ringing in his ears.

The ritual was important, Redteeth thought with fervent passion. The old ways were dying out. The Christians now dominated his homeland, praying in the churches and proclaiming the way of their One True God. But his father had taken him into the woods when he was a boy and told him the meaning of the silver hammer charm he wore on a thong round his neck. The man had cut young Harald’s thumb with his knife and they had shared blood, and then, together, they had butchered a wild-eyed pony with their axes and smeared its essence on their faces. As they sat beside the campfire the boy had learned that the same ritual had been conducted by his father’s father and his father and so on back to when the first man and woman were birthed from the armpit of the frost giant Ymir. The Viking spat. The past was who you were — you could not trade it for a new life.

Leaving the others behind, he made his way to the rim of the blood-filled dew-pond. While he waited for his journey to begin, he squatted on the edge of the pool and peered into the depths.

Time passed. The roaring of the fire diminished, and the screaming ended suddenly and starkly. Even the wind dropped so that there was only a comforting silence with the snow falling all around. It was a sign. The guides had heard him.

Nausea came first, but passed quickly, followed by a sweat that froze upon his forehead. When it cleared, a deep, abiding peace descended.

Turning to the flickering flames on the embers of what had been the village he saw faces watching him. The vaettir were stirring.

‘I will never let the past die,’ he told them.

Through the stark branches of the swaying trees, he glimpsed the alfar, moving out from their homes in the deep wood. Their eyes glowed with an inner light that spoke of the land across the sea.

‘Through blood and fire, I will keep the dreams of my ancestors alive,’ he told them.

A moment of tension fell across the area, and Redteeth felt that a presence had arrived, although he could not see it. A voice rang out, clear and loud in the depths of his head: ‘Come with me to the shores of the great black sea and I will tell you many secrets. I will tell you of the End-Times that are coming, and the stranger, and the part he will play in it.’

The Viking mercenary looked round until his gaze alighted on a raven squatting on one of the corpses on the other side of the bloody dew-pond. For a moment, the carrion bird fixed a beady black eye upon him, and then it took wing high into the falling snow and the night.

Redteeth’s head filled with blood and fire, and he joined it.

‘Run!’ Hereward barked as he propelled Alric through the white forest. Their hot breath clouded in the bitter night air and the crunch of their footsteps matched the pounding of their hearts.

A howl rolled out away to their left, echoed by another off to their right. The wolf pack closed.

Weaving among the oaks and ash trees, the two men slid down banks, leapt rocks and stumbled through patches of brown fern. In places the forest path lay hidden beneath a thick covering of snow and Alric appeared too dazed to search for landmarks.