Tales of the Old World (57 page)

The sky flared orange as more and more homes were lit by the flames that
danced along the wood-slatted sides of the houses and across their
straw-thatched roofs. Soon the whole village would be engulfed.

Stefan saw something move in the shadows on the far side of the square. A
tiny figure, huddled in fear by the side of the road. Stefan ran towards him,
calling his brother’s name above the rising crescendo of destruction all around
them. As he reached the centre of the square, he saw the men coming. Two men,
taller than any he had seen before, rushed towards him. One was carrying a
blazing torch and a heavy axe, the other had something swinging from his hand, a
ball or a bundle of some kind.

Stefan froze. He looked into the faces of the men. They were laughing. Their
soldiers’ clothes were matted with filth and blood. Stefan saw now what it was
that the second man was carrying. His fist was clenched around the hair of a
severed head.

Stefan found he was paralysed, rooted to the spot. He wanted to reach Mikhal
and the safety of the shadows, but could not move. The men kept running. For a
moment it seemed that they would run straight past him. Their eyes seemed to
look through Stefan as though he wasn’t there. Then, at the last moment, the
second man pulled up short. The dead villager’s head swung from side to side in
his bloody hand. Stefan recognised a face. Sickness forced its way up from the
pit of his stomach into his mouth.

The Norse tossed his trophy to the ground and turned towards Stefan. He was
young, probably little more than a boy himself. His features looked human but
his eyes were the colour of blood, set like dark red stones in his smooth, white
face. His face broke into an leering grin, exposing a row of sharpened teeth
like those of a wild dog or a wolf. He said something to Stefan that Stefan
didn’t understand, and reached out to touch him. Stefan flinched away in terror
and a voice called out: “Leave him alone!”

Both Norse turned at the sound of the small, frightened voice. Mikhal tried
to scramble away out of sight but it was too late. The white-faced monster
laughed evilly, and pulled a short knife from his belt. The first man moved
round behind Mikhal to cut off his escape. He was whistling.

Stefan heard his father’s voice in his head. His fear dissolved, and with it
the ice that had frozen his limbs. Suddenly he was running, desperately running
to put himself between Mikhal and the Norse. The knife lying in his pocket
chafed against his skin as he ran.

He was no longer thinking. Every movement of his body was driven by instinct
alone. The younger of the two men appeared not to notice him. His attention was
fixed upon Mikhal now, like a snake mesmerising its prey. The Norse crouched
down and beckoned Mikhal towards him. His companion was laughing a cruel, hoarse
laugh.

At the last moment the Norseman saw Stefan. As he turned towards him, Stefan
lashed out with his feet, kicking the man in the guts. Mikhal darted forward,
escaping the clumsy lunge of the other man.

“Run!” Stefan yelled at his brother. The younger man uttered a curse and
grabbed wildly at Stefan. Stefan fended him off, hardly realising he had the
knife in his hand. He heard the Norse scream. He caught a brief glimpse of the
man’s face; saw the socket running red with blood where the ruby eye had been
gouged out. The Norseman screamed with pain and rage, and struck out blindly.
Stefan felt a cold spike of pain shoot up through his arm.

Then he was running, running with his brother, away from the square, towards
their home, the heat of the flames scorching the skin at the back of his neck,
the voices of the pursuing Norsemen rising above the screams from the village. A
sweet smell of burning wood mixed with the stench of the butcher’s slab.

Mikhal dashed ahead of Stefan, towards the door of the house that still lay
open to the night. Stefan clutched his younger brother by the hand and hauled
him along in his wake.

“Our house,” Mikhal shouted. “Our house is over there!”

“No,” he said, fighting for breath. “Not there. They’re burning the houses.”

“But I want to go back,” Mikhal protested. “I want to go home, Stefan.”

Stefan charged on past the house, dragging Mikhal behind him. He knew that
their lives depended on them keeping going. “We can’t go there again,” he
repeated. “We can’t go back.”

“But father—”

“Father will know where we’ve gone.”

His mind was racing, trying to sift the sounds rushing through his ears. He
could no longer hear the voices of the Norse behind them. He begun to hope that,
for the moment at least, they had lost their pursuers. The dark outline of the
salting house loomed up in front of them; the oddly comforting scents of the sea
mingled with the smell of smoke and carnage.

“In here,” he gasped, tugging his brother’s arm. “Hurry, Mikhal!”

The air inside the thick stone walls of the salting house felt still and
cool. Moonlight creeping through the narrow slats across the window was mirrored
in the silver scales of the gutted fish that lay motionless in their hundreds,
row upon row spread out to dry upon the shelves.

Stefan stopped still and held Mikhal to him. He placed a hand across his
brother’s mouth.

“Quiet.”

Some way in the distance they heard the sound of footsteps approaching the
shed. Stefan looked around in desperation for somewhere to hide themselves.
Stefan walked between the salting trays to the large open vat at the end of the
room where the guts from the cleaned fish were collected, and lifted himself up
onto the lip of the vessel. A familiar stench of rotting entrails filled his
nostrils. The vat was almost full.

Stefan swallowed hard and called Mikhal over. There was no other choice if
they wanted to stay alive. “I can’t,” Mikhal said, horrified.

Secretly, Stefan agreed. “Yes, you can,” he told him. He took a firm grip on
his brother and lifted him up onto the edge of the vat.

“Take a deep breath,” he told Mikhal. “Take a deep breath and pray.”

Stefan lifted a leg over the edge of the vat so that he was balanced over the
mass of stinking entrails. Part of him could not believe he was about to do
this. The other part of him told him that he had to.

Mikhal looked at him in horror and disgust. “I know,” Stefan said. “But I
promised. I promised father.”

He pushed Mikhal backwards into the slippery mass, then followed on, trying
not to crush Mikhal beneath him. His eyes, nose and mouth filled with a cold
oily pulp that stank beyond belief. Stefan choked and gagged, fighting to draw
breath. The darkness enveloping them was total. After a while Stefan pushed an
arm upwards until it broke through the surface of the vat. A little light and
air leaked in.

Stefan spat out the vile tasting scraps that had forced their way into his
mouth. He whispered Mikhal’s name quietly and heard his brother sob a muted
reply.

“How long?” his brother whimpered.

“Hush…” Stefan felt for Mikhal’s hand in the oily mess and tried to take a
grip upon it. “We must wait,” he said.

At first there was only the silence, and the distant sounds of fighting in
the village. Then Stefan thought he heard another sound, closer at hand. The
sound of the door being opened. Not kicked apart, like the other houses in the
village, but eased open gently, as though someone were playing a game of hide
and seek.

He listened carefully, tracking the muffled footsteps around the interior of
the salting shed. Stefan felt his body begin to tremble. The footsteps completed
a half-circuit of the room and then stopped. For a full minute the silence was
absolute.

Stefan held his breath. The urge to look outside and see what was happening
was overwhelming.

Then a voice spoke somewhere in the darkness. It was the voice of the
white-faced Norseman, the man that he had wounded, speaking in Stefan’s mother
tongue.

“Boys,” he drawled, slowly, slurring his speech around the foreign words.
“You come out now, be good. You be safe with us. You see.”

Stefan clamped a hand tight over Mikhal’s mouth. His heart was pounding so
hard in his chest he was sure it could be heard all round the room.

“Boys! You do a bad thing with knife. You got to say sorry now!”

Then a second voice. Stefan couldn’t tell what the second man was saying, but
his tone sounded harsh, impatient. Outside there was a sudden explosion, and
light flashed through the window-slats. Shouts rang out, some in Norse, some in
Kislevite.

The first voice cursed in Norse, then shouted out again Stefan’s own
language: “I find you, one day. I find you, I promise.” Then Stefan heard the
sound of the door being thrown open, and footsteps retreating into the distance.

More than anything else, Stefan wanted to climb out from the vat. His body
was chilled through and soaked in cloying, stinking oil that covered him from
head to foot. His wrist throbbed savagely from the encounter with the norse. Yet
he understood that the only possibly safe place for the two of them was right
there. Somehow he did not think the norse would be back.

He tried his best to hug Mikhal and give him some reassurance. He did his
best to find some way of getting comfortable and the confines of the cold,
filthy tank.

And he waited, waited for he knew not what.

The faint messages from the world outside changed as the night wore on. At
first the sounds of battle had intensified; the clash of steel and inhuman
screams of triumph or pain seemed at one point to be ringing the building
itself. It was impossible to tell which way the battle was going. He could only
hope that, somehow, his father had prevailed and the invaders had been
destroyed.

Gradually the sounds receded, fading into the background as the fighting
either drew farther away, or simply ended. Perhaps, Stefan thought, the Norsemen
had given up. Or perhaps there was no one left to fight. He pushed the thought
away, and waited. Miraculously, Mikhal had fallen into an uneasy sleep,
punctuated by moans and, sometimes, yelps of pain. But Stefan had not the heart
to wake him. Who knew what the new day was to bring for either of them?

Stefan came to with a jolt, shocked by the realisation that he, too, had
fallen asleep. He had no idea how long now they lad lain hidden, but faint grey
light had begun to creep through the windows of the salting house. Dawn had
come.

He listened. Now there was no sound at all, above the steady whisper of
Mikhal’s breathing. Nothing. Even the birds were silent.

His body ached with stiffness and cold, and his wrist throbbed with incessant
pain. Stefan raised his left hand and looked at it. A broad red gash had been
carved across the palm. The salty slurry had served to staunch the flow of
blood, but the wound was deep, and would take a long time to heal.

He found he had lost most of his sense of taste and smell, which was probably
just as well, for he surely stank. Stefan stood up slowly until he was able to
rest his arms on the lip of the vat and look out across the salting house floor.

Sooner or later, he knew, they would have to find the courage to venture out.
And it might as well be now. He doubted anyhow that he could bear hiding in the
stinking vat of entrails any longer.

Everything was exactly as it was the day before, or a thousand days before
that. And it was quiet, peaceful even. Just for a moment Stefan allowed himself
the childish hope that, somehow, all of that dark night had been just a dream.
He stifled the thought quickly and stirred his brother.

“We can get out now. Go and find father.”

“Are you all right?” Mikhal asked him.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Stefan said. In fact he could not remember ever feeling
worse. He hoped that once he started walking his limbs would return to normal.
He took a few steps forward, trying to ignore the pains and the revolting filth
that covered every inch of his body.

The door of the salting house hung open, flapping to and fro in a gentle
breeze. Stefan was just able to make out the faint scent of burning wood that
hung still on the air, reminding him of bonfires on the Feast Days. He took
Mikhal’s hand, and led him outside.

The sun had not yet risen over Odensk. The light was cold and grey, misted
with the smoke from dying fires. But even in this half-light Stefan could see
enough to realise that the village he knew had gone.

His first thought was of the fire in the hearth when he and his father got up
at first light. All around him, fires smouldered and cooled.

The village was no more. Where wooden buildings had stood, only blackened
piles of debris remained. Only those few buildings made from brick or stone had
survived. The wind swept dunes of pale grey ash along the street.

Stefan searched with his brother through a cold new land. Up the path that
led from the salting house, towards the square in the centre of what once had
been the village of Odensk.

Around a bend in the path their search came to an end.

Stefan grabbed at Mikhal to hold him back, but he was too slow.

“He kept his promise!” Mikhal shouted. “He promised to come back!”

Even before Mikhal’s shouts of joy had turned to howling despair, Stefan knew
what they had found. He knew, too, that the door that led back to his old life,
his child’s life in Odensk had shut forever; that in a moment he would have no
choice but to step through a door into another life altogether. The grey dawn
was giving birth to a cruel new world.

Stefan advanced a few more steps and sank to his knees in front of the figure
lying outstretched before them. Mikhal was sobbing now, pounding the hard ground
with his little fists in grief and rage, but, for the moment, Stefan did not
hear him.

He had seen death before, seen it reflected in the glass-beaded eyes of the
fish spread in rows across the wooden slats. But this was different.