Wolfsangel. Part 35

Someone threw down a burning torch. Veles picked it up and peered around. He touched the wall - something sticky was on his fingers. He licked at them and then wiped his tongue with his sleeve. It was blood.

In front of him Bjarki was edging forward, sword drawn.

'There are emeralds here,' whispered the berserk. 'Look. They're huge.'

'Very likely cheap agate,' said Veles, 'I will need to value them properly.'

But they weren't emeralds or agate. They were eyes.

52 King and Queen.

The darkness was not the same as the last time, thought Authun. On the way into the caves from the back of the mountain the woman had taken flint, steel and tinder and a big bundle of candle stubs from a hole under a rock. She lit the candles, one off another, as they descended. But when one blew out the darkness did not seem to cling too close or to seethe with animosity and harm.

The woman had prepared him before they went down - in her way. She had taken the wolf's head pebble that hung by a thong at her neck and tied it around his neck.

'For luck?' he said.

'Death,' she said.

He let her tie it. He felt no different, and as far as he could see it was only a piece of stone.

The king found it hard to credit that this entrance to the witches' caves was so easy to find. It was virtually signposted - a narrow crawl running into the side of the mountain, identified by sacrifices left at its mouth. The tunnel had the shape of a long-handled spoon, spreading into a tall chamber at its end. Access to the actual caves was through the roof of the tunnel, reached by stacking a pile of flat rocks and hooking down a rope with a stick. Anyone could have got in. The split in the cave roof was far from obvious but Authun wouldn't have trusted the entrance to stay hidden if the caves had been his refuge. It would only take a hunch from a curious warrior and the enemy would be in. Why had he gone up the Troll Wall when this was available just on the other side?

Authun wondered if he was heading into a trap. He reminded himself that no one coming to those caves would see anything the witches didn't want him to see. So, were they allowing him in? He had looked at the uncollected sacrifices at the entrance - bottles and pots, anything that couldn't be taken by animals. Were the witches even there?

Still, he wasn't scared. Certain of death and welcoming it, there was no room for terror in his life. So the bodies of the boys, the rat-eaten corpses of the girls, the puffy flesh of the drowned women in the ponds and the rotting, blackened faces of those who hung by ropes from spars of rock only caused him the discomfort of remembering how many people he had sent to similar fates.

The constriction of the tunnels, however, was another matter. Authun was not afraid of death but he had no desire to suffocate, his own arms sealing his mouth and nose in a tight gullet of rock. Some of the pa.s.sages were scarcely wider than his head and he had to squirm and wriggle his way through. He began to see why this entrance was not so well guarded as the others on the Troll Wall side of the caves. An enemy coming in this way would be hugely vulnerable. A warrior can't fight with his arms pinned above his head. So the route was easy in some ways but at the same time very tricky, even without the witches sending their nightmares stalking through the pa.s.sageways.

As he descended he became more and more sure the witches were dead. How could he have held on to his sanity so long in those tunnels if they hadn't been? What had killed them? They rested by the light of a candle by an underground pool. The pool caught the reflection of the ceiling in the candlelight, turning it into a shimmering golden disc. He looked at Saitada. Had this woman become a witch? Was she now their servant and was he there to kill whatever had caused so many deaths in the tunnels? He put the thoughts aside. They were no good to him. He would just concentrate on what he would do. Act, as always, do and kill until he himself was killed. He wanted no more murders, but when the fight presented itself he would not shirk from it. He knew no other way.

After what he thought must have been a day in the caves he became aware of a soft glow answering the light of their candle from down the tunnel. He looked at the woman and put his hand to his sword. She shook her head, which he took for an a.s.surance of safety.

Drawing quietly closer he realised that the light was a reflection of their own candle from a ma.s.s of gold. Weapons, armour, rings and jewels were piled to the ceiling like a miser's dream. It was said the witches had collected tribute and plunder for a thousand years. It seemed too short a time to collect such a h.o.a.rd.

'How many have died to reach here?' he said, as much to himself as to the woman, and then almost laughed. For most of his life he would have rejoiced in this, taken all he could and returned in glory. Not now. He hardly understood the purpose of riches any more. Jewels were called the tears of Freya, after the G.o.ddess who was said to weep them. He had thought it just a story for winter. But now he saw that tears and precious things have their fates tightly bound.

He touched a byrnie and a shield. Both were dull with age but very finely made and in good repair. The woman shook her head. She meant, he thought, that he would not need them for the battle he was to face. Something though - intuition or just the desire to die as he had lived, in war gear - came over him. In all his lonely meditations and nightmares of regret, some simple warrior's habits had proved unshakeable. In an uncertain situation he would take whatever advantage he could. He put on the byrnie, found a gilded iron helmet to fit him and took up a splendid shield that bore the sign not of the wolf but of the raven. Odin's sign.

Saitada set her candle on the floor, sat on the most comfortable stone she could find and watched him dress. She said that word again under her breath: 'Death.'

There was movement in the mouth of a tunnel. Authun's sword was out, liquid in the candlelight. There was another movement in a tunnel to his left. Then she was in front of him, not three paces away. It was a girl, a wasted and haggard child, dressed in a long and b.l.o.o.d.y white shift. In her hand was a broken spear shaft, the end burned in a fire until it was a wicked tapering shard, a blackened needle.

Authun had only ever seen her face twice before and then only in glimpses. But he recognised her - she was thinner and madder and starved and white but he recognised her. The necklace at her throat burned with all the colours of war. She was the witch queen.

'Lady?' said Authun.

'Death,' said Saitada, pointing to the child.

The candle went out. There was a noise from somewhere deep in the caves. It spoke to Authun's body rather than his mind, pulling the skin into b.u.mps on his arms and neck, drying his mouth and making his heart pump. It was fear given sound - the howl of a wolf.

The witch spoke. Her voice was hardly audible, cracked and weak. 'Odin?'

Saitada struck a flint, and Authun saw in the flash that the queen was gone. Saitada struck again but could not make the tinder catch.

'Odin?'

Saitada struck a third time and the witch was on him, driving the spear towards his head, but Authun caught it in one hand. The witch had no strength in her child's arms. Authun reversed the thrust and smashed the b.u.t.t of the spear into her eye. She shrieked and it was dark again.

Authun couldn't understand why she had thought to attack him this way. She could boil a sleeping man's brains five days' travel away, why fight him like this? Then he thought of the amulet at his neck. Protection against magic was, after all, what they were for.

'Get me light, girl! Strike that flint!'

Then something hit him like an avalanche.

53 The Battle in the h.o.a.rd Cave.

Feileg had cursed himself for his inability to dive into the tunnel. It wasn't a matter of bravery; he simply couldn't do it, like he couldn't fly. His limbs wouldn't obey his commands: his attempts to push himself down into the pool only met with choking frustration.

Adisla had gone and his mind was in a terrible confusion. All he wanted had been his in the fleeting moment of her kiss. He wished that she could have just walked with him off that mountain and gone to his home in the hills instead of plunging into the pool. She had gone to meet the witches, to rescue the prince. He had no other course of action. He loved her, so he had to help her.

He waited for her to come back. It got dark. When it became light, he tried again. Useless. His body would not do as he told it.

He searched the mountain for an entrance in increasing desperation. In a bowl of rock above a dizzying drop there was a cave that looked promising - long and narrow with sacrifices at the mouth - but when he went inside there was the smell of humans but no sign of an entrance. Besides, the ceiling looked dangerously split. He thought it might fall at any instant, so he went back outside. He ran all over the mountain, looking for anything that resembled a way in. There was no alternative, he decided, he would have to try the Wall. He knew the entrances there were easier to spot but also that they were almost impossible to get to.

He climbed to the top of the great cliff, up to a knife-edge ridge on which strange tall outcrops of rocks like the fingers of a monstrous hand stretching for the sky loomed above him. These were the trolls that gave the Wall its name - rumoured to have been turned to stone looking at the beauty of the sunrise. He looked out over the land. He was so high up that it would take him, he thought, twenty heartbeats to hit the ground if he fell. Clouds drifted by beneath him. The route he had followed to reach this point was threatening enough; the overhang below him was almost unimaginable. But he had to try. He lowered himself, kicking his legs into the vast s.p.a.ce below him, his feet feeling for a shelf, a hold. But, as in the pool, his body took over and he pulled himself up. He sat in the freezing wind on the edge of the Wall, hating himself for his cowardice. Then he saw something down on the plain.

There were two travellers far below. He would have ignored them, but then he heard something he had never heard before. It was a howl of pain, a thin blade of sound that seemed to quiver, not in the air but in his head. He knew who it was - Adisla, calling to him to help her. He saw a vision of that jagged rune on the sorcerer's stone and felt a pull like a rip tide impelling him on. Feileg, to whom the language of the wolves was as plain as speaking, knew what the howl had said: 'I am in agony.'

He had to get to her. Perhaps the travellers below would know an entrance to the caves. It was an idea born of desperation rather than good sense.

He watched them move around the Wall, and when he was sure of their route along a ravine he set off to meet them. Then doubts crept in. How long had he haunted these lands as a wolf, smashing and tearing and taking what he wanted? His experiences since the prince had captured him had made him forget who he was. These people would see him as a wild animal and very likely flee. He decided to follow them at a distance and watch for a time before approaching. Still, he would have to be quick. He descended the mountain in swift silent leaps.

He followed them from the top of the ravine around to the back of the mountain. At first he thought they were beggars. The woman was dressed in rags and the man no better. Only the curved sword that the man carried in his hands said that they were people of a different station altogether. Feileg, who had no real appreciation of gold or jewellery, was still dazzled by the magnificence of the scabbard, catching the winter sun in white flashes.

He decided to wait until night, take the man's sword while he was sleeping, then he could bargain it back for information. But they did not stop to make camp, travelling on as the sun weakened to a smoky dusk. Eventually they came to the long cave that Feileg had already inspected. He followed them inside using all his hunter's stealth and watched as the woman piled flat slabs one on top of another. Then she reached up with a stick and fished something from the crack in the cave's ceiling. It was a knotted rope and she began to climb it.

Feileg felt like running forward, pulling her out of the way and climbing the rope into the dark, but had noticed the bearing of the white-haired man. He was old but he was strong. The wolfman was confident he could take him in a fight but saw no point. And the woman? Feileg knew the sisters never left the darkness so she wasn't a witch. However, she seemed to know the caves and might lead him where he needed to go.

So he watched. The man held a candle while she climbed, then she lit another at the top and he went up. The rope was then pulled up and the light faded. Feileg gave it as little time as he dared, grabbed the stick and leaped up onto the pile of rocks. He poked around above him with the stick until he snagged the rope and tugged it free. Then he pulled himself up into the dark. Something else was under his hand. It was a pole and he guessed it would be used to knock over the pile of rocks and cover the tracks of anyone entering the cave. He left it where it was.

After a steep climb he came to where the rope was fastened. Here, the fissure sloped into a level tunnel. There was no light at first, but a wolf is a creature of smell, not sight. The human musk and the fish stink of the candle led him on until, faintly, he saw a glow.

He followed the trail down through the tunnels and the cracks, trusting to the scents when he couldn't see a light. Feileg knew his chances of finding Adisla in that labyrinth were very small indeed but these two were his only hope. He didn't know where they were going but they were going somewhere and they had light. That had to be better than crawling purposely through the dark.

As he descended, Feileg began to feel there was something else in the darkness, something that didn't wish him well. He had no wolfstone to protect him, no gift from a G.o.d to keep him safe. The dark seemed like an animal itself, one that rubbed against him, licked his flesh, knew him even. Something, Feileg sensed, was crawling over his mind, sniffing at his thoughts, marking them with its own scent. The witch, he could tell, knew he was there.

On instinct, he tried to lose himself, to cut away that human part, to just be a wolf hunting in the dark, as Kveld Ulf had taught him to be. He felt the pressure in his head lift and move away. She had gone, but he knew that to get what Adisla wanted - to bring back the prince - he would have to confront the witch face to face. Even at a distance, her presence had seemed like a spider creeping over his brain.

Feileg was sweating now. The candlelight had stopped moving forwards. As he drew nearer it became stronger, its glow more golden. He edged his way to a corner and looked round.

The old man with the sword was standing in front of what seemed to be a hill of gold. The treasure was piled from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern, and the chamber was not low. The man had put on a byrnie and a helmet and was holding a shield that seemed more for show than war. Feileg looked at the way the man stood in his war gear, the confidence that seemed to shine from him. He knew this would be no easy opponent, no merchant's bodyguard to be smashed and dashed.

In front of the old warrior was a child, a haggard girl in a dirty b.l.o.o.d.y shift, carrying a broken spear shaft.

Then the light had gone. In the flash of a flint being struck Feileg saw the man and his companion, but the girl had vanished. Another flash. And another, and the girl was there, stabbing at the warrior with her spear shaft. Feileg saw her fall and then it was dark again.

And Feileg knew. The ragged little girl was the witch and the only hope for the prince Adisla loved. If the warrior was attacking her, that made him his enemy. It was flat dark but Feileg could hear the man breathing, smell his sweat, hear the movement of the rings on the byrnie.

Quiet as a wolf over snow, he sped towards him and struck.

Anyone Feileg had ever faced had been put down by his first attack, and Authun was no different. The king went sprawling to the floor with Feileg on top of him, but even as he hit Authun, Feileg knew he was in a fight. There was no fatal breath of shock for the king, no moment where he needed to work out what had happened to him and adjust. In an instant he had locked out the arm Feileg had put to his throat, driven into the elbow joint with the heel of his hand and forced the wolfman off him, twisting to stand as he did so. All that without sight.

If Feileg had been a less flexible man, Authun would have had him at his mercy, using his arm to pinion him through the shoulder to the floor. Instead, Feileg rolled away and broke Authun's grip, but now the momentum of the fight had changed. Authun was standing, Feileg was on the floor, barrel-rolling away from him.

Feileg felt the king's shin in his side as Authun kept pace with him. The warrior was keeping contact with him so as not to lose him in the dark. Feileg flipped back and heard the sword cut the air.

Feileg was now on his feet. The king's byrnie jingled like a reindeer sled as he moved and told Feileg exactly where he was. The wolfman sprang again. The king could not see him but heard him exhale as he leaped. Authun crouched behind his shield to offer a smaller target and the wolfman went over his head, falling badly on the uneven floor.

There was a mournful sound from far away, like the mountain wind, though they were too far underground to be able to hear that.

All the air had been driven out of Feileg's lungs by his fall, and Authun moved towards him, drawn by the sound of his panting.

The noise again. It couldn't be wind, not here. And it sounded more animal. Authun struck into the darkness but his sword sparked on the floor. There was another flash. Saitada was trying desperately to light a candle. In the instant of light he saw the wolfman about to spring.

Feileg hit him again, but Authun blocked with his shield and bounced him aside. Authun could sense his man was tiring. He wished he had a shorter weapon than the Moonsword with him. If he let the wolfman close with him, he could finish him at close range with a knife.

The flint hit steel once more and Authun caught a glimpse of his opponent. It was enough. The Moonsword sliced out and caught the advancing Feileg across the thigh. The wolfman screamed as he crashed into Authun. The king battered him down with his shield. Feileg was howling, but a deeper sound stopped Authun dead - a rumbling snarl like a rock slide. It was a very large animal, probably a bear, and it was close. The noise distracted the king and the wolfman rolled away.

Feileg couldn't stand - that much was clear to Authun, who could hear him dragging himself away in the dark. With another enemy so close, Authun couldn't risk grubbing about to finish him off, but he knew men in battle could get up from terrible wounds and Feileg's groans gave him away. However, the wounded wolfman was useful to the king. If there was a bear in the cave it would be drawn to the coughing and groaning man on the floor. Then Authun would know where both his opponents were.

Finally, Saitada had the candle lit.

The wolfman was trying to get up while behind him floated two points of green light. When Authun's eyes adjusted, he felt himself shiver.

It was a wolf, but bigger than any wolf he had ever seen. It was bigger than any man, half again bigger than any white bear. How had it got into the caves? The tunnels were surely too narrow. The creature snapped its jaws and looked at him, coughing and hacking.

'Fa . . . fath . . .' If Authun had not known better he would have said the beast was trying to speak.

He made himself loosen his grip on the Moonsword, shook the tension from his limbs, breathed out and walked towards the wolf. To his right Authun noticed the wolfman crawling away. Let him go, he thought. He would be dead from loss of blood before long, and even if he survived wouldn't be back to attack him any time soon. The fury that allows a man to forget mortal wounds is a short-lived thing, Authun knew.

Five paces from the creature he stopped. He was struck that its front right limb was more like a human arm than the foreleg of a wolf but most of all he noticed its teeth - each as big as a boat nail.

The king smiled. This was a rare death, he thought, one worthy of the tales of the skalds, but there was only the scarred woman there to witness it. He almost wished he hadn't mortally wounded his previous opponent. His old friend Varrin would have loved to have died fighting such a monster, he thought. The face of the drowned man came into his mind again. He had killed him, and for what? What had been made by his ambition, what future secured, what treasures won?

The beast hacked and coughed again. Was it trying to speak? It didn't matter. Authun had wanted death and here was his perfect enemy - the opponent who could not be pitied, the monster, the useful fiend who could be struck without compunction.

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 h.o.a.rd 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 pa.s.sage 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.

54 Tracking.

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.