The Reluctant Berserker (23 page)

It felt good to be alone, where he knew his own worth, where he knew the only touch on his skin would be that of the wind. His cheek felt flayed, his mouth foreign to him. He wanted to scrub it off, get his own skin back, feel like his own man again. Yet he could not stop touching his tongue to the place where Wulfstan had kissed him, and the night wind chafed the damp. His body was full of lightning, his lungs full of anger and his spine like a steel rod—like a sharp steel sword. It hurt him to walk. All his bones were sharpened steel, and he could feel them cutting him apart from the inside out.

There was such a rage fizzing under his skin, he wondered for a moment if he had been possessed—it felt larger than he. So the berserks must have felt, gnashing their shields as they went to war, as though they had to kill or they would burst, blown up like a fool’s bladder with anger like air.

Why? Why must he look like this? Why must this happen? Anger tangled with tears. If he could not hit someone, perhaps he could weep some of the poison out? But no, a wise man keeps these things within his mind—life is hard and changeable, and who can respect a man blown about by every wind of thought?

Yet…yet. Oh, Heavenly Kingdom’s Guardian, he had perhaps been prepared for Tatwine’s action. Leofgar had known it was coming when he followed his master’s advice and stayed. He’d braced himself. He understood why he should not resent it—the man had the right—and there, Leofgar was at fault. He could admit it. He knew of Tatwine’s intention and, knowing, he had stayed too long. Wulfstan, though…

His foot glanced off a stone set invisibly beneath the water. The ankle turned, and he went down on one knee, wetting his legs to the skirts of his tunic and his arms to the elbow. This little indignity was one too many. He broke the silence of the last few hours with a cry of mingled misery and pain.

“Piss-drinking son of a sow! Kiss a cow’s arse, you devil-begot bench-boaster. You shit-witted, cunt-bitten coward!”

Even now, a part of him—the scop’s mind in him—noted the line, remembered it for future use when he should be in need of a handy phrase at flyting. The rest too felt a little better for it. He rose and squeezed the water from his tunic, allowing himself to stop for a moment. Fatigue and regret hit him together like a spearhead to the breast.

He couldn’t say, after all, that he hadn’t been expecting something of the sort from Wulfstan either. It would be a lie to insist he had not thought of the man, of lying skin to skin with him with no clothes between. He should not, perhaps, have taken out on Wulfstan all the anger he felt for Tatwine. They could have worked something out, surely? Found a way to please one another that did not disgrace either.

He raised his fingers to feel where his chafed lips had become red and rough from the wet. The kiss hadn’t been, now he cast his mind back, so much a command as an invitation—not so much taking as offering.

If possible, his heart sank lower. Wulfstan was a pox-addled pustule to have tried anything at that point, but if only Leofgar had kept his composure as a man was supposed to do, they could have spoken, come to some kind of agreement, spent the night warm, curled in two cloaks and one another’s arms.

Now, with trackless miles and darkness between, that chance was lost. At the thought, he wanted very much to retrace his steps, find Wulfstan and try that conversation again. But who knew where the man had gone, following Leofgar’s wraith through the dark? Leofgar would not find him for blundering about equally blind.

Sighing, Leofgar resigned himself to his wyrd, sent up a prayer to God to twine his path once more with Wulfstan’s, and left it at that, returning his mind to thoughts of his harp.

The drizzle had dried, but clouds crouched low over the land. When he looked up at the line of the road, it was easy to see the blush of madder-red light on the underside of the sky where someone had built a roofless fire. A mile or so back from where he stood, but doubtless he had walked further in his rage than he had meant to.

Now he untied his last weapon from his belt—the slingshot he used to hunt small birds for meat. Picking the stone out from under his shoe, he wedged it in the use-worn hollow of the leather and slipped another two down the neck of his tunic. Thus armed, he began creeping up the wooded slope of the road, making his way towards the light.

His plan comprised of three parts. Firstly, to find out whether that was Tatwine’s camp. Secondly, if it was, to get the harp back. Thirdly, to accomplish points one and two and get away without being caught. It was the third that slowed his steps and called upon all his caution and woodlore to go unseen. It was because he had rubbed his face with mud and stood quite silent in the lee of a twisted oak, with all his senses heightened, that he smelled them first.

A reek like that of foxes came to his nostrils. He breathed deep, silently, tasted wood smoke, wet ash, years and years of sweat soaked into coarse wool with the fat still in it, wet sheep, wet man. He froze, and the owners of the stench went past him, almost as stealthy, but that they were whispering.

“We should get them now.”

“No.” A dogged voice, a youth’s voice with the cadence of an earl’s son and the shake of sickness. Leofgar opened his mouth wide to breathe more quietly, for he recognised it from his meeting with Wulfstan. It was the outlaw boy, come back with more of his kind. “Something stirred them up. They’ll be on edge. Let’s give them time to take off armour, calm themselves and sleep. Then we’ll get them.”

Leofgar let them go past and followed after, watching as they took up places around the circle of firelight. The man in the clearing did not see them, his eyes blinded by the fire. It was Deala on guard now, Hunlaf asleep, Tatwine closeted in his tent with no lantern burning, sleeping, or brooding on what should be done with traitors.

Watching from the outside, watching the wolves close in, Leofgar didn’t know what he should feel, could not think of a story that fitted enough to guide him. He knew what he
did
feel, and that was outrage. Protectiveness. These scum should not harm
his
lord, nor his warriors. Not if he had anything to do with it. But how to stop them without falling at their hands, and without putting himself back into Tatwine’s power?

Chapter Fourteen

Saewyn had been buying a second horse in Cotanham when Wulfstan emerged from the shelter of the nuns’ house to interrupt the capture of a runaway harper. She ducked her head so that he would not see into the shadow of her hood. She had paid for a whole set of new clothes before leaving home, and by alternating pieces, turning her lined cloak one side out or the other, she could pass—at a distance—for five or six different folk. She could shift her sex from one to the other, simply by pulling up or letting down the length of her skirts.

This disguising had been useful over the long period when she had followed him, waiting for the curse to strike, driven to see it happen, to make sure for herself that appropriate vengeance had fallen. It was hardly needed today, for he didn’t look around himself once. He only stood, watching as his companion was dragged away, before he muffled up his horse’s hooves and set off in pursuit.

It was easy to pursue a man, or a party of men, when there was only one road for all. This she knew herself. It seemed a great deal less easy to do anything once they were found.

Exasperated, she thrust the whole asking price of the horse into the seller’s hands. They had barely started to bargain, and he looked at the coins with deep suspicion, and then at the mangy nag on the other end of the leading rein.

“Even I must admit he’s not worth this.”

Saewyn laughed, because it was better than screaming her woes into his face. “If he does what I want him to do, he will be worth every penny.”

Maybe he knew what she was because of the scent of herbs. Or maybe he saw from her eyes what she was about, for he pressed one penny back into her open hand and retreated with a white-eyed unconvincing smile. “Take him and go.”

So she followed the warrior back whence he’d already come, and if it was harder to hide two horses on the road, there were two reasons it did not matter. The first that this was another change of guise, from mounted follower to horse drover. The second that, oblivious as always, he was simply not looking.

His blindness showed her that the curse was working. She’d felt the words and the sacrifice come together to create a great making—she’d
felt it
, she
knew
it had worked. Yet if it had not been for little things like his inability to see her, or the haunted look she had seen on his face on the rare times she had come close enough to tell, she would have said the spell had failed.

He should be dead by now. He should have died before he passed out of Ecgbert’s lands—bucked off by his horse, challenged by one of the other warriors for some petty reason the challenger would not remember later, struck down by elf-shot, savaged by illness or wolves.

The outlaws had been late arriving, but she’d been sure that they were her instrument. Hidden by spell and clump of trees, she’d watched them attack him and felt a kind of salty blood-warm glee at the thought that finally here was Cenred’s revenge, and it was perfect.

She had felt her net tightening, and there had been a kind of horror in it alongside the triumph. Not enough to make her look away, only to make her feel sick afterwards, when some unknown hand had lifted up the edge of the enchantment and allowed him a rescuer.

He should have died in the night from blood loss. Should have died the next day from infection. Should not have regained his strength overnight with the ease of youth and innocence.

Wulfstan had stopped. Saewyn cut her thoughts off at the root and stopped too. The nag was glad to do so—he’d already gone halt on the dry road. Picking up his feet, she saw his hooves looked greasy, felt soft to the nail. She would have to use him tonight before he became too lame to travel with her.

Meantime it didn’t hurt to allow him to rest and sup some water from the ditch of the road, nibble on the mallow that bordered it. Hidden between the two horses, she could lean on his shoulder and watch Wulfstan as he spoke with a fisher-woman in her house out in the marsh.

His face was very open—afraid, but not for himself. She saw with indignation that his haunted look had faded. Out here, where—as he believed—no one he knew was looking at him, he had lost some of his perpetual twitchy wariness and seemed disposed to smile. She watched the fisher-child insult him, saw him answer it with a good humour she had not expected from him.

A babe fell into the water. She had hardly time to dart forward and jostle against the horse’s inquisitive face, before he had pulled it out and restored it to its mother. At the sight she almost choked on the oily swell of her hatred for him. How dare he? How
dare
he so casually fish that woman’s child out of the mire and laugh so dismissively over her gratitude, when he had pushed Saewyn’s under and held him there till he drowned?

She lost a short time to grief. When she came back to herself, trembling, he was gone. No matter—her heart was the harder for her anguish, and he would not be difficult to find again. So something had strengthened him against her spell? A talent he had in himself, or a patron in the spirit world had protected him? She would have to reinforce her working with a second, stronger curse.

A short way off the dry refuge of the road, some small wooded islands raised themselves above the level of the water. Kilting her skirts well above the knee, she headed out towards one of them, tugging the reluctant horses behind her.

It mattered not which one she chose. She tied her own horse to one side of the tiny isle, laid her saddlebags over her shoulder and led the lame horse over to the other. There, she took out her heaviest seax and lopped down a sturdy tree. Peeled of its bark, its trunk was as wide as the circle she could make with her two hands. Large enough to take the runes, which she began to cut into it while she still had the light.

Working from the bottom of the stake to the top, she stained each secret word of power with her blood. As she did so, she felt her skin recoil from the thing she made, all the openings of her body screw themselves tight, afraid its touch might enter her.

It didn’t matter where she set the thing up because it would draw Wulfstan to it as a hook draws in a fish. Her own spirit recoiled from it as it came into existence under her hands. She thought it ugly, with an ugliness that should not be allowed to exist in the world. She wanted it gone—wanted to score a knife through the careful runes and undo them. She wished indeed to kick it into the water and get far away, somewhere clean.

But the hatred in her desired to come out. In this stake she would give it somewhere to live, a place that had no heart to be appalled by it, no head to second-guess. A container into which she could pour every scrap of her malice, and from which it would flow into her victim, pure and unstoppable as the plague.

She dredged it up, every last bit, and put it in the stake. Finishing the thing quickly, so that her scruples and softheartedness had no time to mount a counterattack and stop her, she topped it with its gruesome crown and stumbled away to be sick.

Let the child-killer survive that, if he could!

Chapter Fifteen

Leofgar was a man like any other. Wulfstan knew as much. Indeed, he had seen him held down and nigh broken only hours ago. Yet with Leofgar gone, when Wulfstan’s agony of remorse had worn itself out, what came creeping on its heels was the return of his fear. Elf he might not be, but Leofgar had kept Wulfstan’s curse at bay with nothing more than his presence. This did not surprise Wulfstan. Harpers were known to have strange powers. All that lore and knowledge, all that training, gave a man as sharp a mind as a flint’s edge, and a sharp man’s mind was the deadliest thing in all creation.