The Fabulous Beast (18 page)

The Elf Killer

My tale begins in
Blodmonath
, the blood-month, when sacrifices of livestock are offered to the gods. Our king, Raedwald, was lying sick having been elf-shot by one of those spirit creatures which throng our mortal world unseen by human eye. They cluster round us, living their own lives and it is easy to offend them without meaning to, by treading on a precious wildflower, or kicking a sacred toadstool hidden by tall grasses. Anything and everything seems to upset the elfen, be they
dun-elfen, feld-elfen
or
wudu-elfen.
The mountains, fields and woods are full of the creatures and even kings are not safe from their invisible darts.

Thus it was that Raedwald lay in a bower, attended by his calm but inwardly anxious lady. I am told his brow was hot to the touch and his breath stale and noxious, coming quick from his mouth, and nothing the queen did would bring him back to his old self. Finally, after many sacrifices to Woden, Frith and Tiw she sent for two women of
wicca
whose
scinn-cræft
was said to be the most effective in the land. These two old crones then informed the queen that the elf who had pierced the king with his poisonous dart would have to be killed before the king could recover. An assassin needed to be found who was brave enough to walk amongst the elfen and demons of our shared world.

‘Sherwyn,’ called a neighbour of mine from the frost-bitten slice of land I called my garden, ‘you are wanted.’

I had been roused from a deep sleep in which I was dreaming of a soft-skinned wife who lay with me in willingness.

‘Who wants me?’ I grumbled, reaching for the wolf-coat that had slipped from my breast in the night.

‘Wulfgar, Ramm and Fyren.’

I sat up quickly, my heart beating faster now. These were hearth-companions of the king, wearers of the king’s armrings. One could not keep theigns waiting if one wanted to stay healthy. Warriors had no need to wait for you to be elf-shot. They would pull out your arms and legs as they might take apart a chicken at supper. I rose hurriedly and splashed some cold water on my face before trudging out onto the stone-hard ground outside my hut. Galan was waiting for me, a grin on his face.

We have never liked each other, Galan and me – not since I stole one of his cabbages in an attempt to impress a girl who thought me a coward. He was a much older man, carrying twice my years on his shoulders. I’m told he has a very pretty daughter, but I’ve never seen her since he keeps her with relatives in a distant village. The men in the king’s village tend to be brutish, oafish warriors with heavy statures and small brains. Girls flock around such men of course, leaving none for the poets like me: thin, weedy-looking fellows who scrape a living with heroic words. I have long given up the hope that I shall find a wife to love me for who and what I am. Women need protectors, be they blood-thirsty morons or no: husbands that other wives admire and dream of luring to their beds.

‘I think you’re in for it now, young man,’ Galan murmured as he led the way through the hoary grasses. ‘They seem very angry to me.’

‘Everyone seems angry to you,’ I replied, ‘because they are – you make people annoyed. Your features are enough to send anyone into a rage, with ugly lines, big nose and hairless head.’

Though he touched his high forehead without thinking, the smile did not leave his face. Galan was happy. He believed I was in trouble and nothing I could say would damage his merry mood. The day had started well for him and he intended to keep it going in the same direction.

When we reached the Great Hall, Galan went in ahead of me, calling to the three theigns who stood in its centre.

‘Here he is, Sherwyn. I’ve brought him to you.’

Ramm, muscular and thick-bodied as the animal after which he was named, growled at Galan. ‘So what do you want, a gold coin?’

Galan went a little pale. ‘No, but I would like to stay and watch.’

Fyren, the one with the wicked eyes, peered at Galan through terrible slits. ‘What do you expect to see, big-nose? A man being eaten? Be off with you, before I cut that offensive organ from your face.’

Once my neighbour had scuttled out of the Great Hall and I was alone with the king’s three hearth-companions, it was Wulfgar, the wild one, who spoke to me. His voice had an unusually soft tone, for I was used to hearing him bellow across the fields, as if he pitied me for some reason. I waited, hardly listening to his words, my legs trembling with the fright that now overtook my being, wondering at my fate in the hands of these great warriors. Then I heard the word ‘assassin’ and I suddenly began to pay attention to his speech.

‘You want me to kill someone?’ I said, surprised. ‘Me?’

Fyren grunted. ‘Are you an idiot?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I replied, seeing a way out of my troubles. ‘I could very well be – my mother thought me so.’

Ramm was more patient. ‘Why don’t you listen, instead of shaking in your sandals. You have been chosen. You are to enter into the spirit-world that surrounds us,’ he made a quick protective sign with his fingers as his keen eyes scanned the shadows in the corners of the room, ‘and discover the elf who has caused our king to fall sick. When you find this being, you are to kill it.’

‘What?’ I cried, thoroughly scared now. ‘Why me?’

‘Your name means “quick as the wind” which the assassin will have to be, to escape the elfen once they discover a mortal has murdered one of their number.’

My thoughts ploughed desperate furrows in my head. I am known for my quick wit, not my quick feet. I could not outrun a pregnant sow, let alone the silver-swift spirits of the otherworld.

‘But why not a famous warrior?’ I suggested, in panic. ‘One of you? You have the courage of wild horses. You have the strength of oxen. You are great fighters, festooned with honour. Surely this is work for a man with a heart as big and fiery as the sun. I am what I am, a . . .’

Wulfgar interrupted me, with, ‘You’re a weasel, that’s what you are, and that’s what we need. You are a lean, sly, wispy fellow who can sneak into another world and slip out again without being noticed. Yes, yes, a weasely creature with the grey eyes and brain of a wolf. You’ll do as you’re told. You will find a way to enter into the realm of the elfen and there you will discover the one which laid our king on his sickbed. Now go – and if I see your head in the village after two moons have come and gone, I will remove it from your shoulders with this.’

He unsheathed his beautiful sword with a high metallic ring. I stared at the wavy pattern on the blade: at the glistering edge along which the light from the fire-flames danced. That blade could shave a leaf of grass in two with a whispering stroke. It would sever the head from my body with one simple, easy sweep. I swallowed hard, gritted my teeth, and nodded to the king’s hearth-companions.

‘You can rely on me,’ I said, summoning a confident tone from somewhere deep in my belly. ‘I shall do your bidding with pride. The elf will be dead within by the end of the month or, no need to seek me out, I shall offer my own head to your swords.’

‘That’s more like it,’ grunted Wulfgar, sheathing his weapon. ‘Now go,’ his voice had gone soft again and I knew why – he did not expect to see me ever again and sympathised with my fate, ‘and may Woden be your guide and companion.’

I left the Great Hall, not without first hearing Ramm say to Fyren, ‘Some hopes for that – Woden has better things to do than worry about weasels.’

My first thought, after coming out into the clean, smokeless air of a coming winter, was where I could run to? My sister had married a man in a village much further along the river. I could steal a boat and beg her to take me in, hide me. My sister had always loved me – yet – yet her husband hated my guts. There was no way he would let me stay on his small holding. He would give me up as soon as whistle.

No, that would not serve.

What about running away on foot? I could pack a bag and take flight across the countryside: go out into the wilderness that lay beyond the villages. I could hide myself up on some mountain retreat, in the marshes between the two rivers, down between the peat hags of a lonely moor. Yet winter was coming on, the world out there was full of desperate men, bandits who would kill a traveller as soon as say ‘Good day’. Then, if the robbers and wild men did not get me during the day, the wolves or bears certainly would have a go at night. I knew that if I ventured out into the wider world, I would not last a week.

‘I shall have to go and see the twins,’ I said to myself, glumly, ‘and see if they can help me.’

Bearrocscir and Beomia were the two witches who had ministered to the king’s illness. I knew what had happened. The twins had failed to cure the king of his sickness and so had invented a tale about killing the elf who was responsible. It was them who had got me into this mess in the first place, so they were not at all sympathetic to the idea that I run away and hide myself until the king somehow got better.

‘You have to kill the elf,’ said Bearrocscir, firmly.

‘Destroy the little dart-thrower,’ confirmed Beomia.

‘It’s in the runes,’ said Bearrocscir.

‘Definitely,’ confirmed Beomia.

I think I whined at that point and the twins looked at each other and shook their heads, probably not in pity, but in contempt.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘supposing I do take on this task . . .’

‘Which you have to do,’ they chorused.

‘. . . how do I get into the otherworld? How is a mortal like me, a mere man, able to see the elfen?’

‘You need to eat the five hearts of five different beasts,’ answered Bearrocscir.

‘Shrew, water vole, hedgehog, badger and fox,’ added Beomia.

I shuddered. ‘Can I cook them first?’ I asked, without much hope of a reply in the affirmative.

The two sisters raised their eyes to the ceiling in unison.

‘Of course you can,’ replied Bearrocscir. ‘Who in their right mind would want to eat raw animal hearts?’

‘And is that it? Nothing more?’

‘Of course there’s more,’ said Beomia, irritably. ‘There’s the charm. You must intone the following prior to eating each heart:

~

Out, worms, where you five wormlets crawl,

out from the flesh of the beasts where you sprawl;

 devour the tongue, and each lung, the liver, the all;

eat the skin from my bones, chew the bones where they fall,

so nothing is left but my invisible sawle
.’

~

I marvelled at the poor quality of the cadence and metre of this so-called charm, but I suppose it said what it had to say.

‘Well,’ I murmured, sighing, ‘I suppose I have little choice but to try your magic arts. How do I get back again, when I want to return?’

Beomia said, ‘You must cover your face with cow dung and eat five toadstools – red crack, birch bolete, slippery jack, spike-cap and Caesar’s mushroom.’ And she gave me another charm to chant.

I left the twins thinking that when their attempts at enchantment failed I could go to the theigns and blame the witches.

I spent the next day, first trying to trap the creatures whose hearts I needed, but – being unsuccessful – I had to pay an expert hunter to get them for me. I am not a rich man, far from it, and my whole life’s savings went in one single day. Still, at the end of forty-eight hours Eoforhild had the three of the hearts I needed (I managed to catch a water vole and a hedgehog myself) and I had cooked them ready to eat. Before each meal, the shrew’s heart being very much less than a mouthful of course, I intoned the charm. Things seemed to be going well enough – the meat itself was quite delicous – until I finally ate the last of the organs, the heart of the fox, and then a strange feeling came over me.

I felt something surge through me, like a rush of wind, which soon became stronger and more like a torrent of water. Already sitting, I toppled from the stool and fell to the floor. There the dread sensations continued to attack. I did not so much as close my eyes, but found a darkness overcame them. Colours began swirling through my brain and bright flashes of lightning filled my head. I think I must have screamed for shortly afterwards I heard the voice of Galan, as if coming from a long way off, calling to me, asking me if I was ill. Then I lost consciousness completely and a certain peace descended upon my
sawle
, leaving me to simply lie there my body a weight upon the earthen floor.

When I woke, Galan was still there, but his eyes were wide and staring, and he was crying, ‘Where are you, neighbour?’ over and over again.

‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘Down here, at your feet.’

He paid no heed to my words and continued to look around the room, staring wildly into the corners, continually asking where I had gone. Finally, after a good while, he ran out of the hut. I was glad to see him go, because his shouts were beginning to irritate me. A man of words like me has ears that are sensitive to useless repetition.

I staggered to the open doorway of my dwelling. Staring outside, I could see Galan running across a meadow, raising small bouquets of frost with his big, clumsy feet. There were villagers out there too, going about their business, but both Galan and my other neighbours appeared to be insubstantial beings with no solid form to them.

In contrast to those empty-looking humans there were creatures whp sparkled and glinted with a silvery light. They were beautiful, these curious beings, of mortal shape and size, but delicate-looking and with light, fiery feet. They seemed to dance over the ground, rather than walk on it, their footprints showing only as the shallowest of dints. I gasped at what I saw, for this was surely new to mortal eyes. This shining place hurt my eyes with its brightness. There were no clouds in the sky, only a soft-blue upturned bowl that covered earth. The sun was a gentle golden orb that rested on the treetops of the forest. The frost was there too, but without the bitter cold wind of an Angles’ winter. Instead, a cool breeze caressed my cheeks, lifting a lock of my hair to brush my brow.

There is the Up World, where Woden and the gods reside. There is the Dead World, home of our ancestors. Then there is the Around World, where we and the elfen and other beings live. I was still in the Around World, but I had breached an invisible barrier and found myself amongst the elfen and their kind. Now I was expected to take the bow and quiver of arrows that hung on my wall and go out and seek the elf who had brought our king to his present state of ill health. With a heavy heart and dread of my own death, I did so, slinging the quiver over my left shoulder and grasping my father’s weapon. Oh, I had skill with such a weapon all right, but I had only ever killed wild game my arrows. I had never used them against another mortal, or indeed, elf.