The great beast craned its head in something like thought.
Vali saw the flight of the arrow and knew it was going to miss him, so he ignored it. He hadn’t thought where else it might go. It struck Adisla in the leg, spinning her to the ground in a hard fall.
The bowman died for her, killed not for his arrow but so that Vali’s hunger could feast on flesh that was not Adisla’s. She was trying to stand, her stricken movements firing all his wolf senses, impelling him to take her.
He leaped towards her and stood above her, the man he had been struggling to spare her, the wolf he had almost become simmering in resentment at that restraint. No. Yes. No. Yes. Yes.
The wolfman shoved at Vali’s side, punching and slapping at him, trying to shake his attention from the stricken girl. Slowly the wolf turned its head to him, the black bulk of its body almost featureless against the light of the cave mouth.
Feileg was shouting at Vali, trying to get through to him. ‘After her there is no way back! After her this, always.’ Blood filled up Vali’s senses. He seemed almost to teeter above Adisla, rocking and keening as he struggled to fight the pull of her distress.
There was a scream from below. Lieaibolmmai had tried to climb from the shaft but the ruin of his arm made it impossible and he had fallen. The wolf lunged at Adisla. She felt his breath on her face, his teeth brush her neck. But Vali, still there inside the wolf, pulled his animal body back, slammed Feileg to one side and threw himself into the shaft after the sorcerer. He tumbled down, crashing to the floor.
‘I am lost,’ said Vali, not in the wolf’s growl but in the voice of his mind, ‘and I will never be found again.’
Lieaibolmmai scrambled back through the darkness, back away from the thing he had summoned. He knew he had lost to the goddess and his duty was clear. ‘Seal us in!’ he shouted. ‘Seal us in!’
At the top of the shaft Feileg was heaving at the flat boulder. He couldn’t budge it. Adisla stood, stumbled, stood again and added her weight. A Noaidi ran in to join them. They rolled the stone down the wall until it was level with the shaft.
Adisla fell to her hands and knees at the edge of the pit. She looked down to see a pair of green eyes reflecting the light of the rising sun. The rumbling voice echoed up the shaft.
‘Forget me,’ it said, and Feileg dropped the boulder over the hole.
44
No drumming, no chanting. The remaining Noaidis were numb, slumped on the bare rock as if still entranced. Already the birds were descending, ravens and crows dropping from the sky, their cracked cries sounding something like delight.
Noaidis helped Feileg pile more stones over the boulder to ensure that the beast could not escape. Adisla watched helpless, her leg now agony after the initial shock had subsided. When a Noaidi approached her, Feileg snarled at the man, but he had a small bag and made a sign for the wolfman to be calm. Feileg allowed him to draw the arrow and dress the wound. Adisla was beyond screaming as the arrow was withdrawn and sat vacantly on the rock. The Noaidi pushed water to her lips, gave her reindeer meat and flatbread while Feileg returned to pile on more stones.
Feileg could hear the screams from the shaft. He wondered how long the creature’s resolve to stay in the pit would last. It had food in the shape of the sorcerer. Would that feed its growth? Would it become strong enough to get out? Never mind. They would be long gone by then.
When they could get no more stones on the pile, Feileg rejoined Adisla and put his arms around her. She returned his embrace but not as warmly as he wanted. She was grateful to him and pleased they were both alive, but she did not love him. He had heard what she had said to Vali and knew she was prepared to die for her prince. Despite herself, tears came into Adisla’s eyes. Feileg stroked her hair. He had vowed to kill Vali because the prince had captured him and taken him from a wolf’s life. But for that moment in the cave, knowing what it was to love someone and to feel that love in his arms, Feileg should have regarded him as his saviour.
‘We will free him.’
‘How?’
‘I told you I have many treasures in the hills, and I spoke the truth. I will present them to the witches, put myself at their mercy and ask them to save your prince.’
‘And then?’
‘I am a wolf,’ he said, ‘and have had enough of tomorrow and yesterday. I will die or I will not. I will go to the hills or I will not. I will exist or I will not.’
She thought of Vali looking up at her from the pit. She had seen something of the man in those strange green eyes. She loved and admired him more than ever when she thought of his courage. He had allowed them to seal him in. He, unlike her, had the bravery to die. But then she looked at Feileg, so like him in appearance, so different in personality. In some ways it was as if the gods had answered her prayers, given her a low-born man in Vali’s image — someone she could marry, perhaps could love.
‘I will follow you,’ said Adisla.
‘There is no need. The witches are not always merciful.’
‘More merciful than the fates?’ said Adisla. She looked at him and squeezed his hand.
‘There will be great danger,’ he said.
‘Feileg, I’ll follow you because you came here for me and you saved me. I see that you are the first among men. I’ll follow you because I want my Vali back, but I’ll follow you for baser reasons too. I have no home to go to. My mother is dead in the most awful way and I can never look on that place again without that memory. If I cannot be with him, I’ll be with you. And if I cannot be with you then my life is over.’
Feileg now knew that he would have what he so desperately wanted if only the prince died in that hole. All he had to do was fetch bigger and bigger rocks, perhaps even persuade the Noaidis to bring some over by boat, and make sure that thing was sealed in until it starved.
Adisla had tears on her face as her eyes turned to the great heap of stones over the shaft.
‘Come on,’ said Feileg. ‘We will go to the witches.’
45
Veles Libor was not in a good mood. His promise to King Hemming that he would find a way to rid him of the prince and make him a little money at the same time had come to nothing. The deception of the escape — played for the benefit of the mob — had been a good one but he hadn’t foreseen the pirate attack. Hemming would fall into a fury if Veles returned without Forkbeard’s gold and would assume he had pocketed it himself. That, thought Veles, would be a problem to dwarf the unenviable difficulties he was already facing.
He couldn’t believe how quickly they had lost Vali in the fog. They’d scarcely cut him adrift when he disappeared and there had been no sign at all of him since.
‘I’d just cut loose from this king if I were you,’ said Bodvar Bjarki. ‘You could disappear east and he’d never hear of you again.’
‘Neither would anyone else. A merchant without a prince to protect him is nothing,’ said Veles, ‘and besides, his name is worth ten on every hundred to me.’
The berserk was ungovernable, he thought. The crew would have been mutinous if they had not been so depleted and weakened by the attack, and the ship was low on provisions. His actions during the battle had made him an object of contempt to the men and he had to endure being called ‘barrel man’, ‘keg creeper’, ‘tun tickler’ and whatever other less than inventive nicknames they could come up with.
Despite this, Veles now assumed informal command of the vessel, in that he determined its next move. This was not because he had any authority with Bjarki or the hired crew but because he was the only one who seemed to have any idea what they might do.
They stopped at the little market at Kaupangen, where he managed to sell some of the taken battle gear for a reasonable price and to hire five passably hardy-looking Danes to replace some of the men lost in the battle. He made sure the Danes knew who paid their wages and picked them for their brawn and stupidity. He wanted stupid — it was an essential requirement for the expedition he had in mind. He had lies to tell and didn’t want clever men finding them out. The crew was down to twenty-six — five for him, at least in theory, and nineteen for the berserk. The odds were very far from ideal but they were better than they had been.