Fenrir (5 page)

‘There are many explanations for this sort of thing. An illness, perhaps, a passing brain fever. A dream is often just that, lady, a fancy without any connection to the day-to-day.’

‘I dream him while waking. He is always there.’

More screams. Jehan heard a shouted word in the Norse tongue: ‘Die.’

He didn’t pause. ‘And how do you know him for the devil?’

‘He is a wolf. A man and a wolf at the same time. He comes from the shadows and the side of my sight. He is beside me as I fall to sleep and there in the instant of my waking. He is a wolf and he speaks to me.’

‘What does he say?’

Aelis crossed herself again. ‘He says that he loves me.’

There was a clamour right outside the cathedral. The fighting was close now. Aelis looked up. The darkness around the weak candle glow seemed to swim and to seethe, a liquid black. There was a thump against the door, so hard that it seemed it would splinter.

‘Are we to die, Confessor?’ said Aelis.

‘If it is God’s will,’ said Jehan.

‘Then pray for us.’

‘No,’ said the confessor. ‘Pray for our enemies, that they might find the light of Christ in their hearts before our soldiers kill them and so have a chance of heaven. We are believers and so can be more hopeful we will go to God.’

She stood and Jehan heard her draw in breath. To Aelis the dark had now taken on a different quality. It seemed to bristle, to move and even to shine, like the fur on a hog’s back. Then the shadow at the edge of the candle glow took form, moved and stepped forward into the light.

The lady gasped. There, like a creature of wrapped shadows, stood the figure of the wolfman, his savage head leering down at her from the darkness, his pale skin taut and smeared with blood.

‘He is here,’ she said. ‘He is here!’

‘Who?’

‘The wolf, the wolf! The devil is come!’

Jehan cast his head around. There was a dark, animal scent away to his left. He could hear the breathing of a third person now, hear the girl trying to catch her breath in her panic.

‘We are clothed in the armour of God, Satan; you cannot harm us,’ said the monk. His voice was steady and calm, almost bored, like a teacher speaking to a naughty child.

‘
Domina
,’ said the wolfman. He hacked out the word as if it was stuck in his throat, his accent guttural and strange. ‘
Domina
.’ Aelis tried to make herself think. She had been taught Latin since her earliest years but she couldn’t even make her mind translate this simple word. The monk, however, was unafraid.

‘Do not call for the lady, devil; your business is with me.’ The confessor spoke in Latin too.

The wolfman ignored him.

‘
Domina
. My name is Sindre that is called Myrkyrulf, and I am here to protect you.’

Finally Aelis found her Latin. ‘Against what?’

‘Against this,’ he said, and the doors of the church flew in.

Aelis would later recall only impressions of the first moments of the attack. There had been the flash of something, like a curve of flame, like a sliver of a blood moon glinting from the dark. It was the sword, she realised later, the sword that belonged to that hideous thing. It had caught the fire of the buildings that were burning behind the church, the blade sparking to life in an instant before turning from the light and vanishing from the sight but not the mind.

She had never seen a weapon that was curved like that. Its shape seemed like a symbol for murder, a shallow crescent of malice. And then that word that sounded like a talon tearing through the darkness.

‘Hrafn!’ It was the wolfman who spoke and though she did not understand what he meant it seemed to wake something in her, to bring images with it, smells and sounds. She saw a wide plain of the battle dead, saw ragged banners streaming in the breeze. The air was thick with what she at first thought was smoke but, when she identified the sound that accompanied it, she knew was not smoke. It was the buzzing of numberless flies. He was there on that plain, the wolf. She couldn’t see him but she could sense his presence, a hot snuffling and grunting thing creeping at the side of her eye that she could not turn to see with her full sight.

She stood up, blinked and shook her head, forced reality to return. She put her hand to a pillar for support. The vision had been so sharp and had come on her so quickly that she feared she was going mad.

The church was suddenly crazy with battle. Men hacked, kicked, bit and punched at each other in the dark. In the firelight she saw her brother, Eudes, his shield strapped on his back, slashing with his long and short swords into the enemy. The Danes had come, for sure.

Axe heads glinted in the dark, faces loomed and fell, spears were thrust and hacked down, friend became indistinguishable from foe.

The wolfman grabbed her by the arm and pushed her forward. ‘Walk towards the door,’ he said. ‘You will not fall.’

‘Aelis, Aelis!’ her brother was screaming but he couldn’t get to her, he was hemmed in by two opponents. The flickering light of the flames outside fought the darkness of the church; things flashed from the shadows, metal, wood, blade and spear tip, shields, faces, arms and feet. Three times men came at her, trying to grab her and pull her away, but three times the snarling shadows seemed to engulf them before they could touch her and they fell with terrible cries. She kept walking towards the door. Ten pillars from it, eight, now five, now two. She was nearly free. Then the arc of the crescent was sweeping down on her, the curve of flame that was that terrible sword.

‘Aelis, Aelis!’ Her brother’s face was contorted in anguish, as though melting in the heat of the burning buildings. Fire seared her skin; the taste of ashes and blood was in her mouth. The sword was a tongue of lightning stretching towards her. There was a blur of movement, a sound like a sack falling off a cart as the shadows reached out to smash the swordsman to the floor. Then she was running, bundled through the narrow streets by an unseen hand. She glanced behind her, tried to see who was driving her on. It was the wolfman. Even though she was running as fast as she could, he was just sidestepping down the alleyways, watching for pursuers as he drove her forward.

‘Hrafn!’ he screamed back towards the church, then he said something unintelligible, though she could tell it was in the Norse tongue. The words meant nothing to her but she caught their intent clearly. The wolfman was warning away his enemy, telling him that he would die.

She stumbled but the wolfman held her up. Where was he taking her? The moon was a lantern, casting the streets in a bright and empty light but leaving deep shadows beneath the eaves of the buildings.

Then they were out into the square and she saw where they were going – down the alley to the Pilgrims’ Gate. There it was, but locked and guarded. Two men-at-arms came forwards with spears.

‘Lady, we are here for you.’

The wolfman pulled her to a halt, ignoring the advancing warriors, still looking behind him.

‘Up into the house,’ he said. ‘Jump into the water and swim. He will not follow you that way. Fall prisoner to any but him. Do not let him see your face. Do not let him see your face!’

‘Who?’

There were two soft thumps, followed by a sound like the fall of a thousand coins. Both the men-at-arms had collapsed, hauberks crashing to the cobbles. Black-plumed arrows had caught one in an eye, the other through the neck.

‘Go!’ The wolfman leaped to shield her. Another soft thump and a heavy exhalation. The wolfman had taken an arrow to the back. He still had the strength to push her towards a door. She pulled it then pushed it. It opened and she fell into a small house.

Moonlight split the darkness inside and she saw the huddled faces of women and children looking at her in terror. She pushed through them to a ladder to the next floor. The room erupted in screams and clatter, as the crowd tried to avoid her, to get out, to do anything but sit in frozen fear. She went up one level, where sleeping mats were strewn around, and then to another above it, a lightless place. She felt around the walls, trying to locate a window. She bumped into something – a loom. It was a weaver’s house; there had to be a window for light to work by. She tripped and hit the floor heavily, stood up and pressed on, her hands frantic on the walls.

Then she found it. Cloth had been nailed across the window in a poor attempt to keep out the cold. She tore it back and looked out. She was not on the river side but looking into the street. Something down there slipped from shadow to shadow. Was it the wolfman? There was movement beneath the arch of a doorway. Then it stopped. A figure walked forward from the direction of the great church. He went to the arch and knelt at the edge of the dark. She shivered to look at him. He was a lean dark man, his hair thick with tar so it stood up in a shock. Something had been put into it – feathers, black feathers standing up in a horrid crown. He was completely naked, his body smeared in white clay and ashes so it shone under the moonlight, pale as a corpse. In his hand he carried a bow and on his back was an empty quiver and that cruel curved sword she had seen in the church, now housed in a dull black scabbard. There was something wrong with his skin too, she realised. It had a rough quality to it. She squinted forward through the dark. It didn’t look like smallpox, but she was too far away to tell.

The inhabitants of the house were streaming across the square, the women herding the children away. Eight of the Danish invaders came into the square – big men covered in tattoos, the one at the front carrying a large shield with the design of a hammer on it. His sword was drawn and he was pointing it at the naked man, warning him in some way. Not friendly.

The man was oblivious to him; he was tugging at something in the shadows. It was an arrow. It would not come free and, as he pulled it, the body of the wolfman came with it into the light.

‘No!’ said Aelis, and the man turned to her. She threw her hands across her face and peeked out from behind her fingers like a frightened child. He gave a rasping cry of exultation as he saw her and leaped towards the house. The big man with the shield cursed and Aelis scrambled across the room. She lost all composure, knocking over looms, falling over bales, crawling towards the opposite window. She pulled off the vellum covering it and crouched to look down into the river. It was three times her height beneath her.

She couldn’t jump, couldn’t bring herself to do it. She heard the creature make the floor below, his footsteps light and quick. She put a leg out of the window but brought it back again. The drop was too great. She stepped back inside the room and glanced around her. There was the hatch where the ladder emerged. She tried to kick the ladder away but it had been tied tight to the beams and she had nothing to cut it free with. She looked down, remembering the wolfman’s warning to cover her face. There, just visible in the weak light of the floor below, was a face looking back at her, its eyes sharp and pitiless as a bird’s. At first glance she thought that he was wearing a mask of some sort, but as he put his foot on the ladder she could see his face was a network of tiny scars, as were his neck and upper body. It was nothing like leprosy – in places the scars were neat and defined, more like a large pin had dug into him than like the ravages of disease.

He looked up and spoke to her in Latin: ‘Thing of darkness, death bringer, you will not escape me.’

‘Who are you?’

‘A man of honour,’ he said and leaped at the ladder.

And then Aelis was falling. She had done what she thought she could not and gone feet first through the window. The water hit her hard, forcing her wimple over her eyes, blinding her. She struggled for the surface, her skirts heavy and tight about her legs. She pulled off the wimple and cast it aside. The water was so cold, ice meltwater from the hills, crushing the breath from her body, but the current was not strong. The upstream bridge on the south side had partially collapsed. The Norsemen had made an abortive attempt to pile debris, bodies and whatever they could get their hands on onto the ruin to make a causeway to the city. They’d been beaten back but had succeeded in somewhat stemming the considerable force of the river. The downside was that the water was foul. Aelis clamped shut her mouth to avoid swallowing it and struck for the shore. Her country childhood served her well – she was used to swimming in rivers and lakes – though her skirts were terribly restrictive and she had to hold them above her waist and kick with her legs to make progress. Things were smashing into the water about her. A table leg went over her head, then something heavy splashed behind her. She coughed and shook, turned and saw a stream of cloth from a bale flying through the night. Her pursuer had no more arrows and was throwing all he could find. She hammered forward across the river, went under, panicked, her legs pumping wildly. Then she hit something. Solid ground was under her feet. She made one last effort and got to the bank.

She didn’t turn, just kept scrambling up, her flesh shaking on her bones with the terrible cold. She heard the voice of the thing behind her.

‘
I dag deyr thú!
’ he shouted, and then in Latin, ‘This is your death day, monster!’