Wolfsangel

52

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 passages 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 passageways.

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 assurance of safety.

Drawing quietly closer he realised that the light was a reflection of their own candle from a mass 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 hoard.

‘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 goddess 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 bloody 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 bumps 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 butt 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.