The Reluctant Berserker (13 page)

Hunlaf’s eyes widened, and for a moment Leofgar felt some satisfaction, some relief from the constant grind of humiliation. But the warrior snorted with laughter, shook his head. “You think yourself too good for me, eh? You ragged beggar, plucked out of the snow.” He slapped the horse on the neck twice, making it sidestep nervously, and gave another half-angry, half-amused sigh.

“Well, perhaps this is wisdom, and I’ve no need to get in the way of my lord’s possessions. When you’re a little older, and he is done with you. If you’re still pretty, we’ll talk again.”

Outrage that Hunlaf had actually said it burned every other dark emotion out of Leofgar for a moment, left him a hollow creature filled with ravening flame. “You can’t say that and not fight me! You
will
fight me!”

“Don’t be a fool.” Even the drooping ends of Hunlaf’s moustache seemed to turn up in triumph as he walked away. “It is below me to fight with peasants and women. You should be glad of that or you’d be on the ground now, bleeding and pleading for mercy. You think too much of yourself if you suppose I’d sully my good blade with you.”

It was not a happy party which rode out of the burh, though the day was full of spring charm, with a washed pale sky above and flowers on every hedge and tree. Lords-and-ladies crowded the borders and mocked Leofgar with their prick-like pistils, stout and red. His anger, with soil thrown atop it, had nowhere to go except to burn itself, and it smouldered on under his tongue and under his ribs, made his answers short and his expressions sour.

Tatwine rode with a straight back, joltingly—and painfully too if his frown could be believed. He was ever casting a disapproving eye on Hunlaf, who responded by putting his head down and setting his mouth hard.

During the morning, Deala and Oswine tried to lift the spirits of all by a constant stream of talk, comparing the points of the horses, sharing observations on the countryside and the best parts of the wood to which they were going, discussing the rumoured movements of the Norsemen and hoping that this year the fighting would reach far enough inland for them to join in. By noon they were hoarse, and when Tatwine stopped by a stream to allow the horses to eat and rest—and to take a bite of bread himself—they too lapsed into silence.

The land began to rise, and they passed under silver birches with brilliant new leaves. Leofgar strung his bow and set an arrow on the string. Servants handed the warriors javelins and followed behind bearing quivers of replacements. Birch became beech, and the churchlike hush of the forest came down, broken only by the hooves of their horses. The clear light dimmed and greened.

A burst of movement to Leofgar’s right and all the ill thoughts in the world could not stop his body from turning in the saddle, drawing, aiming and loosing in one movement. A hare, kicking out its last moments like a drumbeat, became their first prize.

“That was a fine shot,” said Tatwine, in a tone of jocular praise that didn’t quite cover the uncertainty. “You did not tell me you were an archer.”

Hunlaf too, Leofgar saw with a breath of vindication, looked puzzled, as though he had seen something that did not fit in any of the word-chests in his mind. He did, it seemed, truly think that Leofgar’s so-called beauty could not coexist with an ability to kill.
Idiot.

“All my life, lord,” he said. “I hunted for our food when my master and I were in the wilderness. Indeed, I wager there is no creature on middle earth I can’t bring down with a sharp-pointed shaft to the throat.”

“Again I say ‘you did not tell me’.” Tatwine wore a quizzical look, so this was not a rebuke, and Leofgar felt free to reply.

“I have been occupied all winter with graver matters and could not get out to practice. I did not mean to conceal it, lord. I hope I have done no wrong?”

“Of course not. It merely came as a surprise.”

A pause, and the trees spoke in whispers around them, while Leofgar wondered—hoped—they had learned to think of him as more than a prize to be won.

Hunlaf gave his amused snort, and said, “Leofgar Haresbane,” and—as if released from torment—they all relaxed into laughter.

Hare’s bane.
Leofgar set his mouth and tried not to picture the next arrow standing out from Hunlaf’s shoulder. He would get a boar, perhaps, or a bear if he was lucky, and that would shut their mouths. Maybe, if he did, Tatwine could be made to see that he was as much a man as any of them. Maybe his lord could be shown enough to change his mind about Leofgar’s status, and he would quietly revise his offer of “comfort” to that of respect.

This was Leofgar’s happy thought when they reached the clearing in which they were to camp, left horses and baggage with the servants, left the servants setting up tents and digging a pit for the fire. By now it was late afternoon, the air was silvering and blue shadows creeping out from beneath the trees. Birds were returning to their nests—plump pigeons, weary on the wing. Beasts would be stirring from their daytime sleep, crawling out from their dens, calling out their possession of the night.
Wolf’s bane,
Leofgar thought. Yes. That would put a stop to the warriors’ mockery. If he could get two, he could line a cloak with the fur and have the badge of it with him always.

So, he placed himself on the end of the line of hunters who padded silently into the thicker underbrush, let himself drift away from them while he brought down small game—another hare, a pair of squirrels for gloves. The light continued to dim, and though he scoured the wet ground he could find prints only of badgers and one large fox. Before long, the leaves and twigs between him and the other men had grown impenetrable enough so he could no longer see them, and at that thought he paused and took a deep breath of relief.

Wise men said there were demons in the forest, elf-folk and mound-folk, ettins and earth spirits. But Leofgar had journeyed in the waste places all his life and did not fear such things. It was men he feared, and now he recognised the threat by the pleasure it brought when it was withdrawn. Giving up the thought of impressing Tatwine with his prey—evidence of manliness would take some time to seep through the lord’s thoughts and change them, by which time it would be too late—he simply swung up into the obligingly curved boughs of a nearby oak, found a seat in the crook of two branches, wrapped his cloak firmly around him and settled in for the night.

Let them suppose he was so poor a tracker as to have got lost in the dark. They could not think worse of him than they already did. He tucked his bow around his knee so that it would not drop if he slept, leaned his cheek against knobbly bark that smelled of moss and tannin and worried at the thought that he was being disloyal. He had given an oath of allegiance and had meant it.

Did that mean being willing to have his lord disgrace him? Did it mean being willing to be used like a slave? Surely not. If Tatwine were a good lord, he would have as much care for Leofgar’s honour as Leofgar did himself. He would be protector and guardian, not abuser. One should not have to fear sleeping under the same canvas as one’s own lord, as a captive had to fear the presence of a Viking chief.

Yet, and yet, Leofgar had fastened himself to Tatwine with the bond of his word. He had done it for Anna, and Anna was no more, but a man’s sworn word did not change when the world changed. Nor did it depend on the worthiness of the one to whom it was given. Would he really be proved oathbreaker over this? Must he choose to despise himself henceforth whichever course he picked?

He wished fruitlessly that he had his master there to talk to. Even if Anna had known no better than he what to do next, it would have eased his mind to have spoken it. And that would never come to pass again, for the old man was gone.

At the end of a long night of snatches of sleep and sorrow, Leofgar straightened his aching limbs and gently let himself down from the tree. Picking his way back to the clearing just as the others were stirring, he watched Tatwine come blearily out of his tent with beard askew and hair uncombed, and felt a chain come down on his neck.

It was the first time Tatwine had looked at him without softness, all the handsome bones of his face turned mace-like and his eyes cold. “Where have you been?”

“I was looking for wolves.” Leofgar dropped his gaze so his lord would not see the join where truth shaded into lie. “The night came upon me unawares. I could not find my way back until the sun rose and I could see the pillar of smoke above the fire.”

Tatwine stepped close, caught Leofgar’s chin in his hand and raised it. Warmth, old sweat smell and the musty, heavy scent of fur and sleep. Leofgar was a storyteller by his craft and found it no hardship to look up with wide, innocent eyes, as free of guile and as trusting as a spring lamb.

Some of Tatwine’s fimbulwinter chill thawed, but he still leaned in, brought his face close to Leofgar’s and pressed privately to his skin a dagger of words. “I did not bring you here for your hunting prowess. Tonight you will come to me, is that clear?”

Leofgar tried to turn his face aside from the words, but the hand that held him was like a band of iron and he could not. “It is, lord.”

“Good. See to it then, and no more playing coy.”

Leofgar’s face burned hot and his back broke out in cold sweat. His thoughts and his body felt strange to him, as though he were playing music with gloves on.

It took half an hour of riding in search of deer for his mind to wake up and begin to turn over possibilities. He could not flee, though he was on horseback, for Lark was left in the hut at Tatwine’s burh, and he would not leave her behind. What then?

After a morning of walking their horses through the widest paths and greenest clearings of the wood, they found a herd of fallow deer gathered in the watermeadows around a small brown stream, narrow hooves sunk in to the knob of the ankle among lilies and reeds.

Quietly, keeping the wind in their faces—for the deer might not know the shape of a mounted man, but they feared full well the smell—Tatwine and his warriors allowed their horses to drift carefully close until the older animals had put up their narrow heads and flicked both ears towards the hunters. Leofgar could have put an arrow in any of them from this distance, but the moment he did the herd would spook and bound away, and he would have spoiled the shots of the warriors with their javelins. He felt friendless enough without provoking them so, and held the bow loosely, just for show.

Tension as the horses idled closer. All the deer had their heads up now, their long-lashed brown eyes fixed uncertainly, but with growing suspicion, on this intrusion of their space. A moment as breathless as the sight of an arrow in your chest, and it broke. Hunlaf and Deala stood up in their stirrups and both threw at once. One stag stumbled, tripped over its own front legs and fell into the stream, the javelin embedded in its neck. Another—shaft standing out from its shoulder—leaped three feet into the air, dislodged the spear and bounded off at breakneck speed, white all around the edges of its eyes and its nostrils wide. The rest of the herd flowed after it, sharp feet digging into the turf of the riverbank as they jumped to solid ground and hurtled away.

Leaving the servants to butcher the one animal already down, Tatwine and his warriors set heels to their horses’ ribs and galloped in pursuit of the shoulder-sore one. Leofgar followed them, with none of the joy he might have taken in the chase, for he had had an idea, and although it did not seem good to him, it did seem as though it might work.

Accordingly, when they had followed the wounded stag for some hours and its pace had begun to slacken, Leofgar looked around him for a narrow gap between trees, and a branch at chest height. They were going a little fast when he saw it—a hummock of stone overgrown with moss, a dip concealed on the other side, and a young branch of an ash, that looked whippy enough to make him fall without breaking him.

Everything in him protested as he drove his horse towards the gap. The horse itself felt his uncertainty and fear, and began to buck beneath him. The animal’s fear fed into his own, and back, until they were both frantic with it. This was stupid, stupid. Was this really worth being killed over. God it was going to hurt! Couldn’t he change his mind?

He whacked the horse hard on the withers with the springy end of his bow, making it surge forward, squeeze through the gap—dislodging his legs. It jumped wild over the drop on the other side of the stone, making him pitch forward, strike his chest on the branch and fall—wheezing and panicking and certain he should not have done this—backwards against the stone.

His skull hit moss and hard rock beneath it. There was a bloom of sparkling brilliant colour, a sphere of silver that folded itself into itself and popped, leaving darkness. Then even that went away.

The pain came when he woke up, the world rocking underneath him, his cheek jolting against wet-hot horsehair, his nose full of blood and the scent of hay. When he tried to open his eyes, the dazzle drove itself into the bone between his brows and made his brains fall out. Darkness came again.

At some point after this unconsciousness became sleep. He was aware of snatches of conversation, the feel of sheepskin and hard stony ground under him. Then he woke up a second time to find himself slung like a peddler’s pack over the back of his horse, and he recognised the road into the burh, the cart tracks and boundary markers that said they were almost home.

Groaning as the horse’s step jostled him, he reached out an uncoordinated hand and found the loose end of the reins looped over its neck. Tugging, he got the horse to stop long enough for him to scramble into the saddle, lie down again with his arms around its neck. The plan had worked—he had slept another night unmolested. His head burned like a beacon with pain and his stomach roiled, and he felt sick and tired of everything, ready to lie down and die. He was not entirely sure this outcome was worth what he had paid for it.