Aelis was gone, the wolf too. As soon as she had ridden away it had fought free of the Franks and run for the woods, dragging a knight’s corpse behind it.
Raven wiped his sword on his cloak and sheathed it. ‘Nastrond,’ he said.
Ofaeti, still panting from where the wolf had seized him, nodded. ‘The corpse shore.’ He looked around at the bodies on the beach, recovered his breath and said,
‘She saw there wading in tides of blood
Oathsworn men and murderers too and betrayers of friends.
There ravens fed on
The corpses of the dead, and the wolf tore men.’
‘That is the time-worn prophecy,’ said Hugin, ‘the beginning of the twilight of the gods.’
Ofaeti put his hands to his sides. They came away wet with blood but the wounds were superficial. The werewolf could not have wanted to kill him, he thought. It had left twenty or more men dead on that beach. He had never, in all his battles, seen men so ripped and broken. The gulls and crows were circling already. The Viking had been shocked by the appearance of the werewolf and the ferocity of its attack but not by its existence. Unlike the confessor, he had no difficulty accepting the reality of magic. He had been raised on a hill farm and grown up with the certainty that elves, dwarves, trolls and wolfmen were as real as the sheep he tended, the rain that soaked him and the frost that chilled him.
Leshii appeared from behind a dune.
‘You were absent when the war work was done,’ said Ofaeti.
‘I brought the Raven here, showed him the nearest place to catch a ship, knowing this monastery would attract them.’
‘You brought no one anywhere. These meetings are preordained,’ said Hugin; ‘they were destined to happen.’
‘And is it preordained for you to get into Ladoga? Because if it is, you don’t need my help.’
‘You may have your part to play in what is to come,’ said Hugin, ‘but do not imagine that you can avoid your fate.’
‘My wars are the wars of coin and exchange,’ said the merchant. ‘I would have got in your way fighting that thing. What was it?’
‘An enemy of Death,’ said Hugin.
Leshii looked around him.
‘I wouldn’t like to meet Death’s friends then,’ he said.
Ofaeti for once did not feel like joking. He wanted to honour his dead comrades with poetry in the traditional way of warriors.
‘Empty the mead benches of Valhalla were,
So the dark god sent his wolf to fill them.
Now the sands run with the blood of the brave
And the warrior’s hands itch to hold the weapons of revenge.’
Hugin listened carefully. He had not been raised among the northmen but was steeped in their traditions. He knew the honour that Ofaeti was giving his friends was as deep as that the Franks gave their dead with their prayers and tears, or the Moors with their wailing and lamentations.
‘My kinsmen are dead,’ said Ofaeti, ‘and I have no way back to my homeland. I have three ships I can’t sail and treasure I can’t carry. Food and drink to me now are treasure. I have had smoke in my head for days and it will not clear but by cool water.’
Raven stood. ‘Walk up to the monastery; there will be food and water there.’
‘You wear a rich robe, warrior,’ said Leshii. ‘Did any other treasure come with it?’
‘It’s already in the ground,’ said Ofaeti, ‘so don’t think to rob me of it.’
‘The reverse,’ said Leshii. ‘I was thinking to secure you a good price.’
‘I will follow the wolf,’ said Raven.
‘I’ll come with you. That wolf has killed three of my friends and I would have the payment of its pelt for that,’ said Ofaeti.
Hugin nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have a use for you.’
‘No one uses me,’ said Ofaeti.
‘The gods do, as they use us all,’ said Hugin. ‘There is a destiny in train here, a destiny of blood. It is up to me to stop it.’
‘I thought you said destinies couldn’t be avoided,’ said Leshii.
‘Not by you,’ said Hugin, ‘but with effort and determination heroes may stand against the gods.’
‘So modest,’ said Leshii.
‘How will you avoid this destiny?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Find her.’
‘She was going to Helgi, if that helps,’ said Ofaeti.
‘That was her intention when she left me with a wet arse in Francia,’ said Leshii.
Raven thought for a moment. ‘Then it’s as I thought. Helgi must die,’ he said.
‘What good will that do?’
‘The god is on earth. This I saw in visions, and I am sure it is true. My sister was a sincere defender of the god and she sought to protect him from his destiny by killing the lady and using me to help her. The wolf follows the lady. The lady goes to Helgi. There, then, is where the skein of fate ends — when the wolf fights the corpse god.’
‘You think Helgi is your god?’ said Ofaeti.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What if he is?’
‘Then I must try to kill him before the wolf does. I must stop the destiny unfolding.’
‘And what good will that do?’
‘It will end it.’
‘What?’
‘The cycle of blood — the god comes to earth, the wolf comes to earth and kills him.’
‘Why do you care?’
‘Because the lady draws the wolf on, the lady dies too.’
‘I ask again,’ said Leshii, ‘why do you care?’
‘Because when the enchantment broke,’ said Hugin, ‘I remembered.’
‘What?’
‘Before. When I swore to protect her.’
‘Before when?’ said Leshii. ‘You’ve been trying to kill her all the way from Paris.’
The Raven ignored him and spoke to Ofaeti: ‘I ask a service of you, fat man, for freeing you from the enchantment of the witch.’
‘I do not know it was her enchantment but I do know it ended when you killed her, so I might believe it was so. What is the service?’
‘A simple one. Find a woman, raise many good sons and tell the story I am to pass to you. Have them tell it to their sons as long as the world lasts. You will have a noble task.’
Ofaeti gestured at Leshii. ‘Why can’t you or he have many sons and tell them these stories?’
‘He is old, and my fate is to die.’
‘How to die?’
‘Opposing the wolf, as I have before and will again. It is my destiny.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘My sister, that thing that I took for my sister, showed it to me, but in a guise I could not recognise.’
‘She was a wide-seeing woman,’ said Ofaeti, ‘skilled in Seid magic. You know your end, and yet you do not seem happy. A man goes smiling to his fate once he knows it.’
‘Because, for all the witch’s lies, there must be a way to break the curse. If not then I will live in the future as I have lived so far — ignorant of myself, beguiled. It may be too late for me in this flesh but not too late as I will be tomorrow. In our future incarnations one of us might recognise what is going on and be able to act to stop it before we are damned to misery and suffering again. We are going to send a message to eternity, fat man, and you are going to carry it.’
‘I will come with you to Helgi,’ said Ofaeti. ‘Not to serve your purpose but because I swore an oath to the girl to protect her. She is in danger, so I will follow you, shapeshifter, not for fame, not for gold or for sons. I will follow because the girl asked me for protection and I offered it. The witch who lies dead on this shore enchanted me and made me harm the lady against my word. I need to repay that or it will be a hard welcome for me in the halls of the dead. And my kinsmen must be avenged. We will find this wolf and kill it. I struck it once and it bled well enough. No reason why I can’t strike it again and see it bleed some more.’
‘You will not be able to kill it,’ said Hugin, ‘until it has performed its part in the god’s great ritual and sent the All Father to death.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Ofaeti. ‘I have met many men who claimed to be invulnerable, Eric Harm-Hard for one.’
‘What happened to him?’ said Leshii.
The fat man winked. ‘He didn’t live up to his name when he fought me.’
‘This is different,’ said Raven.
Ofaeti just grunted and turned towards the monastery.
Leshii looked up at the treeline. There was a lot of forest between them and Ladoga, and mountains too — haunts for all sorts of wild men. And what were they chasing? The thing that had loomed from the darkness to take the lady? That was the sort of creature that wise men ran away from, not towards. Still, he wanted to keep the necklace the Raven had given him, the one he now wore concealed beneath his kaftan. How much did he want it, though? Enough to stay with these madmen who set out to spite the gods. Probably not.
Leshii ran to catch up with Ofaeti. ‘I told you you should have left me on the hill,’ he said. ‘The lady has brought you no luck.’
Ofaeti smiled, though tears were in his eyes. Leshii guessed he was thinking of his dead kinsmen. ‘Too late for that now,’ he said. ‘The past is a wind at our backs. We cannot unblow it.’
Ofaeti walked away across the wet sand to the monastery and Leshii began collecting weapons and other valuables from the corpses. There were ten fine swords there at least, which would give him plenty to trade, should he stop at Birka. The necklace was hugely valuable, and there were also the hundred dirhams in the sorcerer’s pack, but Leshii had had his fill of adventure. When they reached the first market town he would say his goodbyes.