Heroes of the Valley (32 page)

'He orders you to bow down before him—'

Again Halli shook his head, but he could not summon words. His knees trembled; he felt a strong desire to quell the shaking, to bend down, kneel . . .

'He orders you to—'

Aud's voice was faint, but firm: 'Know that we are of Svein's and Arne's Houses, of noble and ancient stock. We bow to no nameless creature of a cairn.' She gripped Halli to her as she spoke; some of her strength passed to him. He drew himself up.

The great figure stood motionless; thin light drifted on its helm. Brodir said: 'Halli Sveinsson, he talks to you, not her. Why do you not kneel? You
know
his name.'

Halli sought to shake his head once more, but the effort was beyond him.

Light faded; all was almost dark; only the faintest gleams of armour showed. Brodir said heavily: 'You know his name, Halli Sveinsson. You know who he is. He is the rocks and trees, the fields and streams. He is the stones of your hall, the timber of the bed you slept in. He is your bones and blood. He is the Founder of your House and the Father of you and all your kin, and he
dislikes
being disobeyed.'

Until that moment Halli's dread had overwhelmed him. Now, suddenly, he felt a spark of anger too. 'Why can he not tell me so himself ?' he asked softly. 'Let me see his face.'

Brodir's wail was shrill, despairing. 'Do not question him! He is terrible!'

Halli said: 'That may well be. But in one matter you are certainly wrong.
My
father's name is Arnkel. He lies in his bed down there. This thing is no kin of mine.'

Metal clashed, chain mail rang: the silent shape stepped nearer in the darkness.

'Arnkel?' Brodir cried. 'Arnkel, who is weak and womanled? Arnkel, who dies without ever having struck a man? He shall not be part of our company when he is carried up the hill.'

Halli bared his teeth. 'That is not my uncle speaking. He loved his brother.' He glared into the dark. 'What thing are you that needs to use a dead man's tongue? I say again: let me see your face!'

Even as he spoke the moon broke out from behind the clouds and shone harshly down upon the silent form. Halli and Aud cried out; they flinched away.

The figure was bathed in silver light. Its armour shone gloriously, pitilessly – the crested helmet, inscribed with ornate tracery, with loops and patterns; the chain-mail coat, gleaming with the seamless intricacy of fish scales . . . The sight was brilliant, painfully beautiful – it almost blinded them.

But beneath it was nothing but squalor and decay. Inside the helm: a mouldering skull with broken teeth and sagging jaw. Within the shimmering mail: a gaping hollowness. Ribs poked through rents in the armour; where the chain mail ended, tattered fabric gave onto gristle, knotted kneecaps, yellowed leg strips . . . The silver greaves swung loose on fleshless shins; the feet inside the rotting boots were nests of little bones.

Brodir gave a howl. 'Great Svein is our Founder! We are his children, and must follow him after death!'

Halli shook his head. His fear was quite forgotten now, its place taken by a quiet, icy fury. It was an anger born of grief and indignation – at the deaths that he and Aud would shortly suffer; at the piteous state of his uncle Brodir, summoned from his cairn against his will; and, deeper down, but most bitterly, at the final shattering of the heroic dreams that had sustained him as a child. Like the glittering armour before him, those ideals were now proved utterly false and hollow. Where had they come from? Where, in the end, did they lead? The answer was the same. To the silent, voiceless, rotting thing that stood upon the crag top, radiating arrogance and brutal pride.

'Long ago I dreamed of being a hero in your company,' Halli said huskily. 'I'm sorry to say your reality disappoints me.'

Brodir's head lolled as if he were listening to faint sounds. His mouth opened. 'Silence! He orders you not to speak. You – who have wasted the qualities he cherishes, who have grown soft and tractable under the influence of women, who are weak, without stomach for a fight –
you
may not speak to him. You are no follower of Svein.'

'No?' Halli said. 'When I always sought to maintain the honour of our House? When I sought vengeance for my uncle? When I protected the hall when the Hakonssons came? How have I offended him?'

The giant figure stepped closer, finger-bones cracking fast about the sword-hilt. 'Do not speak!' Brodir cried. 'How have you offended? The list is long. Each time you had a chance to kill a man, you drew back. You let this girl fight your battles for you. You consort with her, when she is of another House. Worse than this, you break the boundary; you seek to leave the lands he made for you. Worst of all, you dare to wear his belt!'

The last words were a livid scream; with a shriek of metal, the sword was drawn. A bone hand held it, shimmering and delicate. A winding serpent pattern ran along the blade. It was twice the length of the clumsy, stubby one Aud had.

Aud whispered: 'Halli – take my sword.'

Halli, ignoring Aud, speaking to the silent shape, said: 'You are nothing but a dead thing in a cairn. You can have no use for belts or anything else, for that matter. So what if I leave your lands? Your time is past. The people of your House consort with who they will. My mother is from Erlend's House; we are all of mingled blood. Aud Ulfar's-daughter has just helped defend your House against the Hakonssons—'

'None of his children are worthy of him!' Brodir whimpered. 'They do not live by the old rules.'

'I know someone who did,' Halli said savagely. 'Hord Hakonsson. He killed Brodir here. He burned your hall.'

Brodir moaned, clutched his skull with both hands. 'Hord Hakonsson
was
worthy,' he whispered. 'He would have walked among Hakon's company for ever, had he not been so stupid as to cross the boundary with you.'

To hear such words forced from Brodir's mouth made Halli's anger flare. 'Since when,' he cried, 'did the hero Svein care for Hakon's kin? You loathed him and all his House.'

Once more Brodir listened; once more he relayed the things he heard. 'In life the heroes were divided,' he said, 'but at the Battle of the Rock, they joined together in death, bound by their vow. Their sacrifice saved the valley. They stood against the Trows. They slew a hundred of the beasts in a single night, so that their corpses were piled stinking on the earth of Eirik's field. They drove them onto the moors, so they never dared return, but died at last in the wilderness beyond. They cleansed the valley. It is theirs. It is theirs by right – and they exert that right
for ever
.' At this the armoured figure stepped closer; in the shadow of the helm, bone glinted, bare teeth grinned. 'Take off the belt,' Brodir intoned, 'and bare your neck.'

'The Trows died in the wilderness . . .' Halli said.

'Then that cave,' Aud whispered. 'It wasn't
human
remains at all, but—'

Halli's voice was small and wondering. 'The bones of Trows . . .'

'Take off the belt,' Brodir said. 'Your master commands it.'

Halli looked up abruptly. 'The time is past when I cared a straw for what the dead might want. Get lost, Svein. I keep the belt.'

For an instant there was silence on the crag.

Then Brodir's body contorted violently, his hands pressed against his head, as if deafened by some unimaginable roar of rage. And the armoured figure sprang forward. Bony legs took rapid strides. Rags flapped and spun on decaying threads; chain mail twisted; the terrible sword was outflung wide.

'
Please
take my sword, Halli,' Aud said, thrusting it into his hands.

Halli had scarcely time to grasp it when the glittering, shining shape was upon him. Moonlight gleamed on the serpent in the metal; the sword swung down. Halli lifted his in desperate defence.

The falling sword sliced clean through Halli's blade, was deflected slightly and struck deep into the surface of the rock beside his feet. The strength of the blow forced Halli to his knees; he struggled to rise, but with vicious speed the hero's sword was raised again, drawn back and driven forward, point first, into Halli's chest.

His mouth opened in a scream, but no sound came out; the pain engulfed him. He fell forward onto his face, fingers clawing at his chest.

Aud gave a cry; she flung herself upon the giant figure, grappling the arm that held the sword. Chain mail shifted, the arm jerked to the side, hurling Aud away across the crag. She landed heavily at the edge of the summit, head overhanging the precipice beyond, hair dangling brightly in a thin cascade.

Raising her head stiffly, Aud saw a dark, bent form come scuttling near.

Brodir. Holding Halli's discarded knife.

At the far end of the crag the remnants of the hero Svein stood over Halli's limp and lifeless body. Its skull stared down. Deliberately, contemptuously, it drew back a leg back and kicked him hard. Once, twice . . .

Halli gave a groan, and suddenly rolled aside. The hero Svein stepped away in stark surprise.

Halli got rapidly, painfully, to his feet. He turned to face the hero. The centre of his jerkin was slashed right through. Beneath it was no blood, no wound. Only – glinting merrily, unbroken despite the sword-blow's force – the silver belt.

'Still lucky, you see?' Halli gasped. 'Don't you wish you had one of these?' Still winded, breathing fitfully, he patted at his waist for weapons.

No sword; no knife. Nothing. Except— Bjorn the trader's Trow claw, tucked forgotten in his belt.

With fumbling fingers, he pulled it clear: a little sickleshaped curl of blackness.

'Come on then,' he said.

Black sockets stared beneath the shining helmet. The sword was lifted; the hulking shape stepped forward to strike the final blow.

A thin bright line flashed at Svein's back, striking the neckbones just below the helm. Vertebrae cracked, shards of bone went flying. The skull skewed sideways within the helmet, tilting so that moonlight shone into the sockets and the hollow place between the jaws. The interior was filled with cobwebs.

Aud pulled the butcher's knife back: she struck again. This time she hit the chain mail on the nape and had no effect.

But now Halli was moving too. As the figure flailed and spun, seeking, with its free hand, to readjust the skull's position, he ducked in close, dodging the wildly swinging blade, and with the Trow claw struck down hard onto the arm that held the sword.

The claw cut through the bone as if through butter: the wrist shattered. The hand and sword both fell away. They landed on the rock.

Bone cracked to powder; the sword clanged once and lay still.

The maimed arm swung furiously over Halli's head; the hero pitched, kicked, clawed with the remaining hand. Still skewed inside its helmet, the skull stared blind and helpless at the moon.

Halli and Aud danced back and forth around the giant, darting, feinting, keeping out of reach of the flailing limbs.

Aud shouted: 'Halli – the neck—!'

For a moment it seemed to Halli that he heard something: the faintest noise inside his head, a little voice piping as if from far away.

Stop! I am your Father, the Founder of your
—

Halli dived low, came up at the figure's back. 'Oh, we've been through all that. You're nothing but bones and air.'

He jumped high, swiped with the claw with as much force as he could muster, feeling his shoulder wound tear as he did so. The claw bit through the weakened vertebrae, parting it with the driest of cracks and coming out the other side so that the moonlight sparkled bright upon it.

Halli swung the claw back, striking the neck again, spinning the head round even as it knocked it sideways.

Helm over skull, skull over helm, the head flashed through the air, cracked upon the rock, lost its jaw, bounced, rolled and came to a halt upside-down halfway along the crag-top, with the teeth grinning up at the moon.

Then it shattered.

An empty helmet rocked gently to and fro.

The rest of the body took two steps backwards, the remaining hand slapping ineffectually at the air. A third step – into space. Over the edge of the crag it went. It toppled away; the mists enveloped it. It was gone.

Silence on the crag. Silence in the mist. Silence in the valley and the ridge.

Halli turned: he saw Aud standing on the crag with knife in hand. She was alone. Bare rock and darkness surrounded her, nothing more.

He walked over to her, passing without a second glance a rusted sword and helm that lay discarded on the stone.

They looked at each other without speaking.

'Bloody hell,' Aud said finally. 'Your relations.'

Dawn was near. Bruised, cut, shivering with cold, they huddled together on the centre of the crag and waited.

'What I'm wondering now,' Halli said, indicating the Trow claw that lay on the stone in front of him, 'is if perhaps this thing isn't
quite
as fake as I once thought.'

He looked at Aud. Her shoulders were slumped, her legs outstretched before her. It reminded him of when she'd fallen from the apple tree. She wore the same expression of faint surprise. She shrugged at him, smiled, said nothing.

'Here's another thing I'm wondering,' Halli said. 'Where'd you get my knife? I'd lost it. They took it from me.'

Aud said: 'Ah, there's a story there. Your uncle Brodir gave it to me. At least. one moment he was near me, carrying it, the next he'd skipped away – and the knife was left lying on the rock.'

Halli stared at her. 'You really think . . . ?'

'I do think so.'

Halli thought for a time. 'Good,' he said at last. 'I'm glad.'

Below the crag the mists grew ever more faint and lacelike, until the moor could once again be seen, empty, barren, nothing but grass and gorse rolling to the higher ground. Little by little the moon's power faded too; it drew back, sickly and afflicted, as a pale golden light advanced upon the eastern sky. The distant sea was lit first, then the snowy tops of the southern mountains.

With the valley still in darkness, Aud and Halli sat watching the light gather on the far-off places, the places they had not yet been.